V 




Copyrijjlit 1898, George C. Rockwood. 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN ROUGH RIDERS' UNIFORM. 



The Rough Riders 



By 

Theodore Roosevelt 

Colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry 



[Published in this Series under arrangement with 
Messrs, Charles Scribner's Sons\ 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 
1901 






Copyright, 1899 

BY 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



jP 

n 
6 

i: 



ON BEHALF OF THE ROUGH RIDERS 

1 DEDICATE THIS BOOK 

TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE 

FIVE REGULAR REGIMENTS 

WHICH TOGETHER WITH MINE MADE UP THE 

CAVALRY DIVISION AT SANTIAGO 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



ExECUTivB Mansion 

Albany, N, Y.. May ■ 

1899 



111 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Raising The Regiment g 

II. To Cuba 48 

III. General Young's Fight at Las Guasimas. 83 

IV. The Cavalry at Santiago 125 

V. In the Trenches 173 

VI. The Return Home 214 

Appendices : 

A. Colonel Roosevelt's Report to the Secre- 

tary of War of September loth 257 

B. The " Round Robin " Letter 272 

C. Corrections 279 



] lark ! I hear the tramp of thousands, 

And of armed men the hum : 
Lo ! a nation's hosts have gathered 
Round the quick-alarming drum — 
Saying, * Come, 
Freemen, come 1 
Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick-alarming 

drum. 

" Let me of my heart take counsel : 

War is not of Life the sum ; 
Who shall stay and reap the harvest 
When the autumn days shall come ? " 
But the drum 
Echoed, " Come ! 
Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the solemn- 
sounding drum. 

*' But when won the coming battle, 

What of profit springs therefrom ? 
What if conquest, subjugation. 
Even greater ills become } " 
But the drum 
Answered, " Come ! 
You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee 

answering drum. 

— Bret Harie. 



VII 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



I. 

RAISING THE REGIMENT. 

DURING the year preceding the out- 
break of the Spanish War I was Assist- 
ant Secretary of the Navy. While my party 
was in opposition, I had preached, with all 
the fervor and zeal I possessed, our duty to 
intervene in Cuba, and to take this oppor- 
tunity of driving the Spaniard from the 
Western World. Now that my party had 
come to power, I felt it incumbent on me, by 
word and deed, to do all I could to secure the 
carrying out of the policy in which I so 
heartily believed ; and from the beginning I 
had determined that, if a war came, somehow 
or other, I was going to the front. 

Meanwhile, there was any amount of work 
at hand in getting ready the navy, and to 
this I devoted myself. 

9 



lo THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Naturally, when one is intensely interested 
in a certain cause, the tendency is to asso- 
ciate particularly with those who take the 
same view. A large number of my friends 
felt very differently from the way I felt, and 
looked upon the possibility of war with sin- 
cere horror. But I found plenty of sympa- 
thizers, especially in the navy, the army, and 
the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. 
Commodore Dewey, Captain Evans, Captain 
Brownson, Captain Davis — with these and 
the various other naval officers on duty at 
Washington I used to hold long consultations, 
during which we went over and over, not 
only every question of naval administration, 
but specifically everything necessary to do in 
order to put the navy in trim to strike quick 
and hard if, as we believed would be the 
case, we went to w^ar wath Spain. Sending 
an ample quantity of ammunition to the 
Asiatic squadron and providing it with coal ; 
getting the battle-ships and the armored crui- 
sers on the Atlantic into one squadron, both 
to train them in manoeuvring together, and 
to have them ready to sail against either the 
Cuban or the Spanish coasts ; gathering the 
torpedo-boats into a flotilla for practice ; 
securing ample target exercise, so conducted 
as to raise the standard of our marksman- 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. ii 

ship ; gathering in the small ships from Eu- 
ropean and South American waters ; settling 
on the number and kind of craft needed as 
auxiliary cruisers — every one of these points 
was threshed over in conversations with offi- 
cers who were present in Washington, or in 
correspondence with officers who, like Cap- 
tain Mahan, were absent. 

As for the Senators, of course Senator 
Lodge and I felt precisely alike ; for to fight 
in such a cause and with such an enemy was 
merely to carry out the doctrines we had both 
of us preached for many years. Senator 
Davis, Senator Proctor, Senator Foraker, 
Senator Chandler, Senator Morgan, Senator 
Frye, and a number of others also took just 
the right ground ; and I saw a great deal of 
them, as well as of many members of the 
House, particularly those from the West, 
where the feeling for war was strongest. 

Naval officers came and went, and Sena- 
tors were only in the city while the Senate 
was in session ; but there was one friend 
who was steadily in Washington. This was 
an army surgeon, Dr. Leonard Wood. I 
only met him after I entered the navy depart- 
ment, but we soon found that we had kindred 
tastes and kindred principles. He had 
served in General Miles's inconceivably 



12 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

harassing campaigns against the Apaches, 
where he had displayed such courage that he 
won that most coveted of distinctions — the 
Medal of Honor ; such extraordinary physical 
strength and endurance that he grew to be 
recognized as one of the two or three white 
men who could stand fatigue and hardship as 
well as an Apache ; and such judgment that 
toward the close of the campaigns he was 
given, though a surgeon, the actual command 
of more than one expedition against the bands 
of renegade Indians. Like so many of the 
gallant fighters with whom it was later my 
good fortune to serve, he combined, in a very 
high degree, the qualities of entire manliness 
with entire uprightness and cleanliness of 
character. It was a pleasure to deal with a 
man of high ideals, who scorned everything 
mean and base, and who also possessed those 
robust and hardy qualities of body and mind, 
for the lack of which no merely negative vir- 
tue can ever atone. He was by nature a 
soldier of the highest type, and, like most 
natural soldiers, he was, of course, born with 
a keen longing for adventure ; and, though 
an excellent doctor, what he really desired 
was the chance to lead men in some kind of 
hazard. To every possibility of such adven- 
ture he paid quick attention. For instance, 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 13 

he had a great desire to get me to go with 
him on an expedition into the Klondike in 
mid-winter, at the time when it was thought 
that a relief party would have to be sent 
there to help the starving miners. 

In the summer he and I took long walks 
together through the beautiful broken country 
surrounding Washington. In winter we 
sometimes varied these walks by kicking a 
foot-ball in an empty lot, or, on the rare oc- 
casions when there was enough snow, by try- 
ing a couple of sets of skis or snow-skates, 
which had been sent me from Canada. 

But always on our way out to and back 
from these walks and sport, there was one 
topic to which, in our talking, we returned, 
and that was the possible war with Spain. 
We both felt very strongly that such a war 
would be as righteous as it would be advan- 
tageous to the honor and the interests of the 
nation ; and after the blowing up of the 
Maine, we felt that it was inevitable. We 
then at once began to try to see that we had 
our share in it. The President and my own 
chief, Secretary Long, were very firm against 
my going, but they said that if I was bent 
upon going they would help me. Wood was 
the medical adviser of both the President and 
the Secretary of War, and could count upon 



14 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

their friendship. So we started with the odds 
in our favor. 

At first we had great difficulty in knowing 
exactly what to try for. We could go on the 
staff of any one of several Generals, but we 
much preferred to go in the line. Wood 
hoped he might get a commission in his native 
State of Massachusetts ; but in Massachu- 
setts, as in every other State, it proved there 
were ten men who wanted to go to the war for 
every chance to go. Then we thought we 
might get positions as field-officers under an old 
friend of mine,Colonel — now General — Francis 
V. Greene, of New York, the Colonel of the 
Seventy-first; but again there were no vacancies. 

Our doubts were resolved when Congress 
authorized the raising of three cavalry regi- 
ments from among the wild riders and rifle- 
men of the Rockies and the Great Plains. 
During Wood's service in the Southwest he 
had commanded not only regulars and Indian 
scouts, but also white frontiersmen. In the 
Northwest I had spent much of my time, for 
many years, either on my ranch or in long hunt- 
ing trips, and had lived and worked for months 
together with the cow-boy and the mountain 
hunter, faring in every way precisely as they 
did. 

Secretary Alger offered me the command 



RAISING THE REGIMENT, 15 

of one of these regiments. If I had taken it, 
being entirely inexperienced in miUtary work, 
I should not have known how to get it 
equipped most rapidly, for I should have 
spent valuable weeks in learning its needs, with 
the result that I should have missed the San- 
tiago campaign, and might not even have had 
the consolation prize of going to Porto Rico. 
Fortunately, I was wise enough to tell the 
Secretary that while I believed I could learn 
to command the regiment in a month, yet 
that it was just this very month which I could 
not afford to spare, and that therefore I would 
be quite content to go as Lieutenant-Colonel, 
if he would make Wood Colonel. 

This was entirely satisfactory to both the 
President and Secretary, and, accordingly, 
Wood and I were speedily commissioned as 
Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel of the First 
United States Volunteer Cavalry. This was 
the official title of the regiment, but for some 
reason or other the public promptly christened 
us the " Rough Riders." At first we fought 
against the use of the term, but to no pur- 
pose ; and when finally the Generals of Divi- 
sion and Brigade began to write in formal 
communications about our regiment as the 
" Rough Riders," we adopted the term our- 
selves. 



1 6 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

The mustering-places for the regiment were 
appointed in New Mexico, Arizona, Okla- 
homa, and Indian Territory. The difficulty 
in organizing was not in selecting, but in 
rejecting men. Within a day or two after it 
was announced that we were to raise the regi- 
ment, we were literally deluged with applica- 
tions from every quarter of the Union. With- 
out the slightest trouble, so far as men went, 
we could have raised a brigade or even a divi- 
sion. The difficulty lay in arming, equip- 
ping, mounting, and disciplining the men we 
selected. Hundreds of regiments were being 
called into existence by the National Govern- 
ment, and each regiment was sure to have in- 
numerable wants to be satisfied. To a man 
who knew the ground as Wood did, and who 
was entirely aware of our national unpre- 
paredness, it was evident that the ordnance 
and quartermaster's bureaus could not meet, 
for some time to come, one-tenth of the de- 
mands that would be made upon them ; and 
it was all-important to get in first with our de- 
mands. Thanks to his knowledge of the 
situation and promptness, we immediately put 
in our requisitions for the articles indispen- 
sable for the equipment of the regiment ; and 
then, by ceaseless worrying of excellent bureau- 
crats, who had no idea how to do things 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 17 

quickly or how to meet an emergency, we suc- 
ceeded in getting our rifles, cartridges, revolv- 
ers, clothing, shelter-tents, and horse gear 
just in time to enable us to go on the Santiago 
expedition. Some of the State troops, who 
were already organized as National Guards, 
were, of course, ready, after a fashion, when 
the war broke out ; but no other regiment 
which had our work to do was able to do it 
in anything like as quick time, and therefore 
no other volunteer regiment saw anything like 
the fighting which we did. 

Wood thoroughly realized what the Ord- 
nance Department failed to realize, namely the 
inestimable advantage of smokeless powder ; 
and, moreover, he was bent upon our having 
the weapons of the regulars, for this meant 
that we would be brigaded with them, and it 
was evident that they would do the bulk of 
the fighting if the war were short. Accord- 
ingly, by acting with the utmost vigor and 
promptness, he succeeded in getting our regi- 
ment armed with the Krag-Jorgensen carbine 
used by the regular cavalry. 

It was impossible to take any of the numer- 
ous companies which were proffered to us 
from the various States. The only organized 
bodies we were at liberty to accept were those 
from the four Territories. But owing to the 



1 8 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

fact that the number of men originally allotted 
to us, 780, was speedily raised to 1,000, we 
were given a chance to accept quite a number 
of eager volunteers who did not come from 
the Territories, but who possessed precisely 
the same temper that distinguished our South- 
western recruits, and whose presence materi- 
ally benefited the regiment. 

We drew recruits from Harvard, Yale, 
Princeton, and many another college ; from 
clubs like the Somerset, of Boston, and 
Knickerbocker, of New York; and from 
among the men who belonged neither to club 
nor to college, but in whose veins the blood 
stirred with the same impulse which once sent 
the Vikings over sea. Four of the policemen 
who had served under me, while I was Presi- 
dent of the New York Police Board, insisted 
on coming — two of them to die, the other two 
to return unhurt after honorable and danger- 
ous service. It seemed to me that almost 
every friend I had in every State had some 
one acquaintance who was bound to go with 
the Rough Riders, and for whom I had to 
make a place. Thomas Nelson Page, General 
Fitzhugh Lee, Congressman Odell of New 
York, Senator Morgan ; for each of these, and 
for many others, I eventually consented to 
accept some one or two recruits, of course 






RAISING THE REGIMENT, 19 



only after a most rigid examination into their 
physical capacity, and after they had shown 
that they knew how to ride and shoot. I 
may add that in no case was I disappointed 
in the men thus taken. 

Harvard being my own college, I had such 
a swarm of applications from it that I could 
not take one in ten. What particularly 
pleased me, not only in the Harvard but the 
Yale and Princeton men, and, indeed, in these 
recruits from the older States generally, was 
that they did not ask for commissions. With 
hardly an exception they entered upon their 
duties as troopers in the spirit which they held 
to the end, merely endeavoring to show that 
no work could be too hard, too disagreeable, 
or too dangerous for them to perform, and 
neither asking nor receiving any reward in 
the way of promotion or consideration. The 
Harvard contingent was practically raised by 
Guy Murchie, of Maine. He saw all the fight- 
ing and did his duty with the utmost gallantry, 
and then left the service as he had entered it, 
a trooper, entirely satisfied to have done his 
duty — and no man did it better. So it was 
with Dudley Dean, perhaps the best quarter- 

' back who ever played on a Harvard Eleven ; 

r and so with Bob Wrenn, a quarterback whose 
feats rivalled those of Dean's, and who, in 



2 o THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

addition, was the champion tennis player of 
America, and had, on two different years, 
saved this championship from going to an 
EngHshman. So it was with Yale men like 
Waller, the high jumper, and Garrison and 
Girard ; and with Princeton men like Devereux 
and Channing, the foot-ball players ; with 
Larned, the tennis player ; with Craig Wads- 
worth, the steeple-chase rider ; with Joe 
Stevens, the crack polo player ; with Hamilton 
Fish, the ex-captain of the Columbia crew, 
and with scores of others whose names are 
quite as worthy of mention as any of those I 
have given. Indeed, they all sought entry 
into the ranks of the Rough Riders as eagerly 
as if it meant something widely different from 
hard work, rough fare, and the possibility of 
death ; and the reason why they turned out to 
be such good soldiers lay largely in the fact 
that they were men who had thoroughly counted 
the cost before entering, and who went into \ 
the regiment because they believed that this 
offered their best chance for seeing hard and 
dangerous service. Mason Mitchell, of New 
York, who had been a chief of scouts in the 
Riel Rebellion, travelled all the way to San 
Antonio to enlist ; and others came there 
from distances as great. 

Some of them made appeals to me which 1 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 21 

could not possibly resist. Woodbury Kane 
had been a close friend of mine at Harvard. 
During the eighteen years that had passed 
since my graduation I had seen very little of 
him, though, being always interested in sport, 
I occasionally met him on the hunting field, 
had seen him on the deck of the Defender 
when she vanquished the Valkyrie, and knew 
the part he had played on the Navajoe, when, 
in her most important race, that otherwise 
unlucky yacht vanquished her opponent, the 
Prince of Wales's Britannia. When the war 
was on, Kane felt it his duty to fight for his 
country. He did not seek any position of 
distinction. All he desired was the chance to 
do whatever work he was put to do well, and 
to get to the front ; and he enlisted as a 
trooper. When I went down to the camp at 
San Antonio he was on kitchen duty, and was 
cooking and washing dishes for one of the 
New Mexican troops ; and he was doing it so 
well that I had no further doubt as to how he 
would get on. 

My friend of many hunts and ranch partner, 
Robert Munro Ferguson, of Scotland, who had 
been on Lord Aberdeen's staff as a Lieutenant 
but a year before, likewise could not keep out 
of the regiment. He, too, appealed to me in 
terms which I could not withstand, and came 



22 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

in like Kane to do his full duty as a trooper, 
and like Kane to win his commission by the 
way he thus did his duty. 

I felt many qualms at first in allowing men 
of this stamp to come in, for I could not be 
certain that they had counted the cost, and 
was afraid they would find it very hard to serve 
— not for a few days, but for months — in the 
ranks, while I, their former intimate associate, 
was a field-ofiicer ; but they insisted that they 
knew their minds, and the events show^ed that 
they did. We enlisted about fifty of them 
from Virginia, Maryland, and the Northeastern 
States, at Washington. Before allowing them 
to be sworn in, I gathered them together and 
explained that if they went in they must be 
prepared not merely to fight, but to perform 
the weary, monotonous labor incident to the 
ordinary routine of a soldier's life ; that they 
must be ready to face fever exactly as they 
were to face bullets ; that they were to obey 
unquestioningly, and to do their duty as 
readily if called upon to garrison a fort as if 
sent to the front. I warned them that w^ork 
that was merely irksome and disagreeable 
must be faced as readily as w-ork that was 
dangerous, and that no complaint of any kind 
must be made; and I told them that they 
w^ere entirely at liberty not to go, but that 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 23 

after they had once signed there could then 
be no backing out. 

Not a man of them backed out ; not one of 
them failed to do his whole duty. 

These men formed but a small fraction of 
the whole. They went down to San Antonio, 
where the regiment was to gather and where 
Wood preceded me, while I spent a week in 
Washington hurrying up the different bureaus 
and telegraphing my various railroad friends, 
so as to insure our getting the carbines, saddles, 
and uniforms that we needed from the various 
armories and storehouses. Then I went down 
to San Antonio myself, where I found the men 
from New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma 
already gathered, while those from Indian 
Territory came in soon after my arrival. 

These were the men who made up the bulk 
of the regiment, and gave it its peculiar char- 
acter. They came from the Four Territories 
which yet remained within the boundaries of 
the United States ; that is, from the lands that 
have been most recently won over to white 
civilization, and in which the conditions of 
life are nearest those that obtained on the 
frontier when there still was a frontier. They 
were a splendid set of men, these Southwest- 
erners — ^tall and sinewy, with resolute, weather- 
beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man 



24 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Straight in the face without flinching. They 
included in their ranks men of every occupa 
tion ; but the three types were those of the 
cow-boy, the hunter, and the mining pros- 
pector — the man who wandered hither and 
thither, kilUng game for a living, and spending 
his life in the quest for metal wealth. 

In all the world there could be no better 
material for soldiers than that afforded by 
these grim hunters of the mountains, these 
wild rough riders of the plains. They were 
accustomed to handling wild and savage 
horses ; they were accustomed to following 
the chase with the rifle, both for sport and as 
a means of livelihood. Varied though their 
occupations had been, almost all had, at one 
time or another, herded cattle and hunted big 
game. They were hardened to life in the 
open, and to shifting for themselves under 
adverse circumstances. They were used, for 
all their lawless freedom, to the rough dis- 
cipline of the round-up and the mining com- 
pany. Some of them came from the small 
frontier towns ; but most were from the wil- 
derness, having left their lonely hunters' cabins 
and shifting cow-camps to seek new and more 
stirring adventures beyond the sea. 

They had their natural leaders — the men 
who had shown they could master other men, 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 25 

and could more than hold their own in the 
eager driving life of the new settlements. 

T^e Captains and Lieutenants were some- 
times men who had campaigned in the regular 
army against Apache, Ute, and Cheyenne, and 
who, on completing their term of service, had 
shown their energy by settling in the new com- 
munities and growing up to be men of mark. 
In other cases they were sheriffs, marshals, 
deputy-sheriffs and deputy-marshals — men who 
had fought Indians, and still more often had 
waged relentless war upon the bands of white 
desperadoes. There was Bucky O'Neill, of 
Arizona, Captain of Troop A, the Mayor of 
Prescott, a famous sheriff throughout the West 
for his feats of victorious warfare against the 
Apache, no less than against the white road- 
agents and man-killers. His father had fought 
in Meagher's Brigade in the Civil War ; and 
he was himself a born soldier, a born leader 
of men. He was a wild, reckless fellow, soft 
spoken, and of dauntless courage and bound- 
less ambition ; he was stanchly loyal to his 
friends, and cared for his men in every way. 
There was Captain Llewellen, of New Mexico, 
a good citizen, a political leader, and one of 
the most noted peace-officers of the country ; 
he had been shot four times in pitched fights 
with red marauders and white outlaws. There 



26 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

was Lieutenant Ballard, who had broken up 
the Black Jack gang of ill-omened notoriety, 
and his Captain, Curry, another New Mexican 
sheriff of fame. The officers from the Indian 
Territory had almost all served as marshals 
and deputy-marshals ; and in the Indian Ter- 
ritory, service as a deputy-marshal meant 
capacity to fight stand-up battles with the 
gangs of outlaws. 

Three of our higher officers had been in ! 
the regular army. One was Major Alexander 
Brodie, from Arizona, afterward Lieutenant- 
Colonel, who had lived for twenty years in 
the Territory, and had become a thorough i 
Westerner without sinking the West Pointer 
— a soldier by taste as well as training, whose 
men worshipped him and would follow him 
anywhere, as they would Bucky O'Neill or 
any other of their favorites. Brodie was 
running a big mining business ; but when the 
Maine was blown up, he abandoned ever^'thing 
and telegraphed right and left to bid his friends 
get ready for the fight he saw impending. 

Then there was Micah Jenkins, the Captain 
of Troop K, a gentle and courteous South 
Carolinian, on whom danger acted like wine. 
In action he was a perfect game-cock, and he 
won his majority for gallantry in battle. 

Finally, there was Allyn Capron, who was, 



RAISING THE REGIMENT, 27 

on the whole, the best soldier in the regiment. 
In fact, I think he was the ideal of what an 
American regular army officer should be. 
He was the fifth in descent from father to 
son who had served in the army of the United 
States, and in body and mind alike he was 
fitted to play his part to perfection. Tall 
and lithe, a remarkable boxer and walker, a 
first-class rider and shot, with yellow hair and 
piercing blue eyes, he looked what he w^as, 
the archetype of the fighting man. He had 
under him one of the two companies from the 
Indian Territory ; and he so soon impressed 
himself upon the wild spirit of his followers, 
that he got them ahead in discipline faster 
than any other troop in the regiment, while 
at the same time taking care of their bodily 
wants. His ceaseless effort was so to train 
them, care for them, and inspire them as to 
bring their fighting efficiency to the highest 
possible pitch. He required instant obedi- 
ence, and tolerated not the slightest evasion 
of duty ; but his mastery of his art was so 
thorough and his performance of his own 
duty so rigid that he won at once not merely 
their admiration, but that soldierly affection 
so readily given by the man in the ranks to 
the superior who cares for his men and leads 
them fearlessly in battle. 



28 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

All — Easterners and Westerners, North- 
erners and Southerners, officers and men, 
cow-boys and college graduates, wherever 
they came from, and whatever their social 
position — possessed in common the traits 
of hardihood and a thirst for adventure. 
They were to a man born adventurers, in the 
old sense of the word. 

The men in the ranks were mostly young ; 
yet some were past their first youth. These 
had taken part in the killing of the great 
buffalo herds, and had fought Indians when 
the tribes were still on the war-path. The 
younger ones, too, had led rough lives ; and 
the lines in their faces told of many a hard- 
ship endured, and many a danger silently 
faced with grim, unconscious philosophy. 
Some were originally from the East, and had 
seen strange adventures in different kinds of 
life, from sailing round the Horn to mining 
in Alaska. Others had been born and bred 
in the West, and had never seen a larger 
town than Santa Fe or a bigger body of 
water than the Pecos in flood. Some of them 
went by their own name ; some had changed 
their names; and yet others possessed but 
half a name, colored by some adjective, like 
Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of Arizona, 
Smoky Moore, the bronco-buster, so named 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 29 

because cowboys often call vicious horses 
" smoky " horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who 
had lived among the Moquis and taken part 
in the snake-dances. Some were professional 
gamblers, and, on the other hand, no less 
than four were or had been Baptist or Metho- 
dist clergymen — and proved first-class fighters, 
too, by the way. Some were men whose 
lives in the past had not been free from the 
taint of those fierce kinds of crime into which 
the lawless spirits who dwell on the border- 
land between civilization and savagery so 
readily drift. A far larger number had 
served at different times in those bodies of 
armed men with which the growing civilization 
of the border finally puts down its savagery. 

There was one characteristic and distinctive 
contingent which could have appeared only in 
such a regiment as ours. From the Indian 
Territory there came a number of Indians — 
Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and 
Creeks. Only a few were of pure blood. 
The others shaded off until they were abso- 
lutely indistinguishable from their white 
comrades ; with whom, it may be mentioned, 
they all lived on terms of complete equality. 

Not all of the Indians were from the Indian 
Territory. One of the gamest fighters and 
best soldiers in the regiment was Pollock, a 



30 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

full-blooded Pawnee. He had been educated, 
like most of the other Indians, at one of those 
admirable Indian schools which have added 
so much to the total of the small credit ac- 
count with which the White race balances the 
very unpleasant debit account of its dealings 
with the Red. Pollock was a silent, solitary- 
fellow — an excellent penman, much given to 
drawing pictures. When we got down to 
Santiago he developed into the regimental 
clerk. I never suspected him of having a 
sense of humor until one day, at the end of 
our stay in Cuba, as he was sitting in the Ad- 
jutant's tent working over the returns, there 
turned up a trooper of the First who had been 
acting as barber. Eying him with immovable 
face Pollock asked, in a guttural voice, " Do 
you cut hair ? " The man answered " Yes ; " 
and Pollock continued, " Then you'd better 
cut mine," muttering, in an explanatory solilo- 
quy, " Don't want to wear my hair long like a 
wild Indian when I'm in civilized warfare." 

Another Indian came from Texas. He was 
a brakeman on the Southern Pacific, and 
wrote telling me he was an American Indian, 
and that he wanted to enlist. His name was 
Colbert, which at once attracted my attention ; 
for I was familiar with the history of the 
Cherokees and Chickasaws during the eight- 



RAISING THE REGIMENT, 31 

eenth century, when they lived east of the 
Mississippi. Early in that century various 
traders, chiefly Scotchmen, settled among 
them, and the half-breed descendants of one 
named Colbert became the most noted chiefs 
of the Chickasaws. I summoned the appli- 
cant before me, and found that he was an 
excellent man, and, as I had supposed, a de- 
scendant of the old Chickasaw chiefs. 

He brought into the regiment, by the way, 
his " partner," a white man. The two had 
been inseparable companions for some years, 
and continued so in the regiment. Every 
man who has lived in the West knows that, 
vindictive though the hatred between the white 
man and the Indian is when they stand against 
one another in what may be called their tribal 
relations, yet that men of Indian blood, when 
adopted into white communities, are usually 
treated precisely like anyone else. 

Colbert was not the only Indian whose name 
I recognized. There was a Cherokee named 
Adair, who, upon inquiry, I found to be de- 
scended from the man who, a century and a 
half ago, wrote a ponderous folio, to this day 
of great interest, about the Cherokees, with 
whom he had spent the best years of his life 
as a trader and agent. 

I don't know that I ever came across a man 



32 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



with a really sweeter nature than another 
Cherokee named Holderman. He was an ex- 
cellent soldier, and for a long time acted as 
cook for the head-quarters mess. He was a 
half-breed, and came of a soldier stock on 
both sides and through both races. He ex- 
plained to me once why he had come to the 
war; that it was because his people always 
had fought when there was a war, and he 
could not feel happy to stay at home when the 
flag was going into battle. 

IVo of the young Cherokee recruits came 
to me with a most kindly letter from one of 
the ladies who had been teaching in the aca- 
demy from which they were about to graduate. 
She and I had known one another in connec- 
tion with Governmental and philanthropic 
work on the reservations, and she wrote to 
commend the two boys to my attention. One 
was on the Academy foot-ball team and the 
other in the glee-club. Both were fine young 
fellows. The foot-ball player now lies buried 
with the other dead who fell in the fight at 
San Juan. The singer was brought to death's 
door by fever, but recovered and came back 
to his home. 

There were other Indians of much wilder 
type, but their wildness was precisely like 
that of the cow-boys with w^hom they were 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 33 

associated. One or two of them needed rough 
discipline ; and they got it too. Like the rest 
of the regiment, they were splendid riders. I 
remember one man, whose character left 
much to be desired in some respects, but 
whose horsemanship was unexceptionable. 
He was mounted on an exceedingly bad bronco, 
which would bolt out of the ranks at drill. 
He broke it of this habit by the simple expe- 
dient of giving it two tremendous twists, first 
to one side and then to the other, as it bolted, 
with the result that, invariably, at the second 
bound its legs crossed and over it went with 
a smash, the rider taking the somersault with 
unmoved equanimity. 

The life histories of some of the men who 
joined our regiment would make many volumes 
of thrilling adventure. 

We drew a great many recruits from Texas ; 
and from nowhere did we get a higher aver- 
age, for many of them had served in that 
famous body of frontier fighters, the Texas 
Rangers. Of course, these rangers needed 
no teaching. They were already trained to 
obey and to take responsibility. They were 
splendid shots, horsemen, and trailers. They 
were accustomed to living in the open, to en- 
1 during great fatigue and hardship, and to en- 
countering all kinds of danger. 



34 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



Many of the Arizona and New Mexico men 
had taken part in warfare with the Apaches, 
those terrible Indians of the waterless South- 
western mountains — the most bloodthirsty and 
the wildest of all the red men of America, and 
the most formidable in their own dreadful 
style of warfare. Of course, a man who had 
kept his nerve and held his own, year after 
year, while living where each day and night 
contained the threat of hidden death from a 
foe whose goings and comings were unseen, 
was not apt to lose courage when confronted 
with any other enemy. An experience in fol- 
lowing in the trail of an enemy who might flee 
at one stretch through fifty miles of death-like 
desert was a good school out of which to 
come with profound indifference for the ordi- 
nary hardships of campaigning. 

As a rule, the men were more apt, however, 
to have had experience in warring against 
white desperadoes and law-breakers than 
against Indians. Some of our best recruits 
came from Colorado. One, a very large, hawk- 
eyed man, Benjamin Franklin Daniels, had 
been Marshal of Dodge City when that pleas- 
ing town was probably the toughest abode of 
civilized man to be found anywhere on the 
continent. In the course of the exercise of 
his rather lurid functions as peace-officer he 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 35 

had lost half of one ear—" bitten off," it was 
explained to me. Naturally, he viewed the 
dangers of battle with philosophic calm. Such 
a man was, in reality, a veteran even in his 
first fight, and was a tower of strength to the 
recruits in his part of the line. With him 
there came into the regiment a deputy marshal 
from Cripple Creek named Sherman Bell. 
Bell had a hernia, but he was so excellent a 
man that we decided to take him. I do not 
think I ever saw greater resolution than Bell 
displayed throughout the campaign. In Cuba 
the great exertions which he was forced to 
make, again and again opened the hernia, and 
the surgeons insisted that he must return to 
the United States ; but he simply would not 

go- 
Then there was little McGinty, the bronco- 
buster from Oklahoma, who never had walked 
a hundred yards if by any possibility he could 
ride. When McGinty was reproved for his 
absolute inability to keep step on the drill- 
ground, he responded that he was pretty sure 
he could keep step on horseback. McGinty's 
short legs caused him much trouble on the 
marches, but we had no braver or better man 
in the fights. 

One old friend of mine had come from far 
northern Idaho to join the regiment at San 



36 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Antonio. He was a hunter, named Fred 
Herrig, an Alsatian by birth. A dozen years 
before he and I had hunted mountain sheep 
and deer when laying in the winter stock of 
meat for my ranch on the Little Missouri, 
sometimes in the bright fall weather, some- 
times in the Arctic bitterness of the early 
Northern winter. He was the most loyal and 
simple-hearted of men, and he had come to 
join his old " boss " and comrade in the bigger 
hunting which we were to carry on through 
the tropic mid-summer. 

The temptation is great to go on enumerat- 
ing man after man who stood pre-eminent, 
whether as a killer of game, a tamer of horses, 
or a queller of disorder among his people, or 
who, mayhap, stood out with a more evil prom- 
inence as himself a dangerous man — one given 
to the taking of life on small provocation, or 
one who was ready to earn his living outside 
the law if the occasion demanded it. There 
was tall Proffit, the sharp-shooter, from North 
Carolina — sinewy, saturnine, fearless ; Smith, 
the bear-hunter from Wyoming, and McCann, 
the Arizona book-keeper, who had begun life 
as a buffalo-hunter. There was Crockett, the 
Georgian, who had been an Internal Revenue 
officer, and had waged perilous war on the 
rifle-bearing " moonshiners." There were 



RAISING THE REGIMENT, 37 

Darnell and Wood of New Mexico, who could 
literally ride any horses alive. There were 
Goodwin, and Buck Taylor, and Armstrong 
the ranger, crack shots with rifle or revolver. 
There was many a skilled packer who had led 
and guarded his trains of laden mules through 
the Indian-haunted country surrounding some 
out-post of civilization. There were men who 
had won fame as Rocky Mountain stage- 
drivers, or who had spent endless days in 
guiding the slow wagon-trains across the grassy 
plains. There were miners who knew every 
camp from the Yukon to Leadville, and cow- 
punchers in whose memories were stored the 
brands carried by the herds from Chihuahua 
to Assiniboia. There were men who had 
roped wild steers in the mesquite brush of the 
Nueces, and who, year in and year out, had 
driven the trail herds northward over desolate 
wastes and across the fords of shrunken rivers 
to the fattening grounds of the Powder and 
the Yellowstone. They were hardened to the 
scorching heat and bitter cold of the dry 
plains and pine-clad mountains. They were 
accustomed to sleep in the open, while the 
picketed horses grazed beside them near some 
shallow, reedy pool. They had wandered 
hither and thither across the vast desolation 
of the wilderness, alone or with comrades. 



38 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

They had cowered in the shelter of cut banks 
from the icy blast of the norther, and far out 
on the midsummer prairies they had known 
the luxury of lying in the shade of the wagon 
during the noonday rest. They had lived in 
brush leantos for weeks at a time, or with 
only the wagon-sheet as an occasional house. 
They had fared hard when exploring the un- 
known ; they had fared well on the round-up ; 
and they had known the plenty of the log 
ranch-houses, where the tables were spread 
with smoked venison and calf-ribs and milk and 
bread, and vegetables from the garden-patch. 

Such were the men we had as recruits : sol- 
diers ready made, as far as concerned their 
capacity as individual fighters. What was 
necessary was to teach them to act together, 
and to obey orders. Our special task was to 
make them ready for action in the shortest 
possible time. We were bound to see fighting, 
and therefore to be with the first expedition 
that left the United States ; for we could not 
tell how long the war would last. 

I had been quite prepared for trouble when 
it came to enforcing discipline, but I was 
agreeably disappointed. There were plenty 
of hard characters who might by themselves 
have given trouble, and with one or two of 
whom we did have to take rough measures ; 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 39 

but the bulk of the men thoroughly understood 
that without discipline they would be merely a 
valueless mob, and they set themselves hard at 
work to learn the new duties. Of course, such 
a regiment, in spite of or indeed I might almost 
say because of, the characteristics which made 
the individual men so exceptionally formidable 
as soldiers, could very readily have been spoiled. 
Any weakness in the commander would have 
ruined it. On the other hand, to treat it from 
the stand-point of the martinet and military 
pedant would have been almost equally fatal. 
From the beginning we started out to secure 
the essentials of discipline, while laying just as 
little stress as possible on the non-essentials. 
The men were singularly quick to respond to 
any appeal to their intelligence and patriotism. 
The faults they committed were those of igno- 
rance merely. When Holderman, in announc- 
ing dinner to the Colonel and the three Majors, 
genially remarked, " If you fellars don't come 
soon, everything'll get cold," he had no 
thought of other than a kindly and respectful 
regard for their welfare, and was glad to 
modify his form of address on being told that 
it was not what could be described as con- 
ventionally military. When one of our 
sentinels, who had with much labor learned 
the manual of arms, saluted with great pride as 



40 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

I passed, and added, with a friendly nod, 
"Good-evening, Colonel," this variation in 
the accepted formula on such occasions 
was meant, and was accepted, as mere friendly 
interest. In both cases the needed instruc- 
tion was given and received in the same kindly 
spirit. 

One of the new Indian Territory recruits, 
after twenty-four hours' stay in camp, during 
which he had held himself distinctly aloof from 
the general interests, called on the Colonel in 
his tent, and remarked, " Well, Colonel, I want 
to shake hands and say we're with you. We 
didn't know how we would like you fellars at 
first ; but you're all right, and you know your 
business, and you mean business, and you can 
count on us every time ! " 

That same night, which was hot, mosquitoes 
were very annoying ; and shortly after mid- 
night both the Colonel and I came to the 
doors of our respective tents, which adjoined 
one another. The sentinel in front was also 
fighting mosquitoes. As we came out we saw 
him pitch his gun about ten feet off, and sit 
down to attack some of the pests that had 
swarmed up his trousers' legs. Happening to 
glance in our direction, he nodded pleasantly 
and, with unabashed and friendly feeling, re- 
marked, " Ain't they bad ?" 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 41 

It was astonishing how soon the men got over 
these httle peculiarities. They speedily grew 
to recognize the fact that the observance of 
certain forms was essential to the maintenance 
of proper discipline. They became scrupu- 
lously careful in touching their hats, and al- 
ways came to attention when spoken to. They 
saw that we did not insist upon the observ- 
ance of these forms to humiliate them ; that 
we were as anxious to learn our own duties 
as we were to have them learn theirs, and as 
scrupulous in paying respect to our superiors 
as we were in exacting the acknowledgment 
due our rank from those below us ; moreover, 
what was very important, they saw that we 
were careful to look after their interests in 
every way, and were doing all that was possi- 
ble to hurry up the equipment and drill of the 
regiment, so as to get into the war. 

Rigid guard duty was established at once, 
and everyone was impressed with the neces- 
sity for vigilance and watchfulness. The 
policing of the camp was likewise attended to 
with the utmost rigor. As always with new 
troops, they were at first indifferent to the ne- 
cessity for cleanliness in camp arrangements ; 
but on this point Colonel Wood brooked 
no laxity, and in a very little while the 
hygienic conditions of the camp were as good 



42 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

as those of any regular regiment. Meanwhile 
the] men were being drilled, on foot at first, 
with the utmost assiduity. Every night we 
had officers' school, the non-commissioned 
officers of each troop being given similar 
schooling by the Captain or one of the Lieu- 
tenants of the troop ; and every day we prac- 
tised hard, by squad, by troop, by squadron 
and battalion. The earnestness and intelli- 
gence with which the men went to work ren- 
dered the task of instruction much less diffi- 
cult than would be supposed. It soon grew 
easy to handle the regiment in all the simpler 
forms of close and open order. When they 
had grown so that they could be handled with 
ease in marching, and in the ordinary manoe- 
uvres of the drill-ground, we began to train 
them in open-order work, skirmishing and 
firing. Here their woodcraft and plainscraft, 
their knowledge of the rifle, helped us very 
much. Skirmishing they took to naturally^ 
which was fortunate, as practically all our 
fighting was done in open order. 

Meanwhile we were purchasing horses. 
Judging from what I saw I do not think that 
we got heavy enough animals, and of those 
purchased certainly a half were nearly un- 
broken. It was no easy matter to handle them 
on the picket-lines, and to provide for feeding 



RAISING THE REGIMENT, 43 

and watering ; and the efforts to shoe and ride 
them were at first productive of much vigorous 
excitement. Of course, those that were wild 
from the range had to be thrown and tied 
down before they could be shod. Half the 
horses of the regiment bucked, or possessed 
some other of the amiable weaknesses inci- 
dent to horse life on the great ranches ; but 
we had abundance of men who were utterly 
unmoved by any antic a horse might commit. 
Every animal was speedily mastered, though 
a large number remained to the end mounts 
upon which an ordinary rider would have felt 
very uncomfortable. 

My own horses were purchased for me by 
a Texas friend, John Moore, with whom I had 
once hunted peccaries on the Nueces. I only 
paid fifty dollars apiece, and the animals were 
not showy ; but they were tough and hardy, 
and answered my purpose well. 

Mounted drill with such horses and men 
bade fair to offer opportunities for excitement ; 
yet it usually went off smoothly enough. Be- 
fore drilling the men on horseback they had 
all been drilled on foot, and having gone at 
their work with hearty zest, they knew well 
the simple movements to form any kind of 
line or column. Wood was busy from morn- 
ing till night in hurrying the final details of 



44 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

the equipment, and he turned the drill of the 
men over to me. To drill perfectly needs 
long practice, but to drill roughly is a thing 
very easy to learn indeed. We were not al- 
ways right about our intervals, our lines were 
somewhat irregular, and our more difficult 
movements were executed at times in rather a 
haphazard way ; but the essential commands 
and the essential movements we learned with- 
out any difficulty, and the men performed 
them with great dash. When we put them 
on horseback, there was, of course, trouble 
with the horses ; but the horsemanship of the 
riders was consummate. In fact, the men 
were immensely interested in making their 
horses perform each evolution with the ut- 
most speed and accuracy, and in forcing each 
unquiet, vicious brute to get into line and 
stay in line, whether he would or not. The 
guidon-bearers held their plunging steeds true 
to the line, no matter what they tried to do ; 
and each wild rider brought his wild horse 
into his proper place with a dash and ease 
which showed the natural cavalryman. 

In short, from the very beginning the horse- 
back drills were good fun, and everyone 
enjoyed them. We marched out through the 
adjoining country to drill wherever we found 
open ground, practising all the different 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 45 

column formations as we went. On the open 
ground we threw out the line to one side or 
the other, and in one position and the other, 
sometimes at the trot, sometimes at the gallop. 
As the men grew accustomed to the simple 
evolutions, we tried them more and more in 
skirmish drills, practising them so that they 
might get accustomed to advance in open 
order and to skirmish in any country, while 
the horses were held in the rear. 

Our arms were the regular cavalry carbine, 
the " Krag," a splendid weapon, and the re- 
volver. A few carried their favorite Winches- 
ters, using, of course, the new model, which 
took the Government cartridge. We felt very 
strongly that it would be worse than a waste 
of time to try to train our men to use the 
sabre — a weapon utterly alien to them ; but 
with the rifle and revolver they were already 
thoroughly familiar. Many of my cavalry 
friends in the past had insisted to me that the 
revolver was a better weapon than the sword 
—among them Basil Duke, the noted Con- 
federate cavalry leader, and Captain Frank 
Edwards, whom I had met when elk-hunting 
on the head-waters of the Yellowstone and the 
Snake. Personally, I knew too little to decide 
as to the comparative merits of the two arms ; 
but I did know that it was a great deal better 



46 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

to use the arm with which our men were al- 
ready proficient. They were therefore armed 
with what might be called their natural weapon, 
the revolver. 

As it turned out, we were not used mounted 
at all, so that our preparations on this point 
came to nothing. In a way, I have always 
regretted this. We thought we should at least 
be employed as cavalry in the great campaigm 
against Havana in the fall ; and from the be- 
ginning I began to train my men in shock 
tactics for use against hostile cavalry. My be- 
lief was that the horse was really the weapon 
with which to strike the first blow. I felt 
that if my men could be trained to hit their 
adversaries with their horses, it was a matter 
of small amount whether, at the moment when 
the onset occurred, sabres, lances, or revolvers 
were used ; while in the subsequent melee I 
beUeved the revolver would outclass cold steel 
as a weapon. But this is all guesswork, for 
we never had occasion to try the experiment. 

It was astonishing what a difference was 
made by two or three weeks' training. The 
mere thorough performance of guard and 
police duties helped the men very rapidly to 
become soldiers. The officers studied hard, 
and both officers and men worked hard in the 
drill-field. It was, of course, rough and ready 



RAISING THE REGIMENT. 47 

drill ; but it was very efficient, and it was 
suited to the men who made up the regiment. 
Their uniform also suited them. In their 
slouch hats, blue flannel shirts, brown trousers, 
leggings and boots, with handkerchiefs 
knotted loosely around their necks, they looked 
exactly as a body of cow-boy cavalry should 
look. The officers speedily grew to realize 
that they must not be over-familiar with their 
men, and yet that they must care for them in 
every way. The men, in return, began to ac- 
quire those habits of attention to soldierly de- 
tail which mean so much in making a regiment. 
Above all, every man felt, and had constantly 
instilled into him, a keen pride of the regi- 
ment, and a resolute purpose to do his whole 
duty uncomplainingly, and, above all, to win 
glory by the way he handled himself in battle. 



48 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



II 

TO CUBA 

T IP to the last moment we were spending 
every ounce of energy we had in getting 
the regiment into shape. Fortunately, there 
were a good many vacancies among the 
officers, as the original number of 780 men 
was increased to i ,000 ; so that two companies 
were organized entirely anew. This gave the 
chance to promote some first-rate men. 

One of the most useful members of the 
regiment was Dr. Robb Church, formerly a 
Princeton foot-ball player. He was appointed 
as Assistant Surgeon, but acted throughout al- 
most all the Cuban campaign as the Regimental 
Surgeon. It was Dr. Church who first gave 
me an idea of Bucky O'Neill's versatility, for 
I happened to overhear them discussing Aryan 
word-roots together, and then sliding off into 
a review of the novels of Balzac, and a dis- 
cussion as to how far Balzac could be said to 
be the founder of the modern realistic school 
of fiction. Church had led almost as varied 
a life as Bucky himself, his career including 



TO CUBA. 49 

incidents as far apart as exploring and elk- 
hunting in the Olympic Mountains, cook- 
ing in a lumber-camp, and serving as doctor 
on an emigrant ship. 

Woodbury Kane was given a commission, 
and also Horace Devereux, of Princeton. 
Kane was older than the other college men 
who entered in the ranks ; and as he had the 
sanae good qualities to start with, this resulted 
in his ultimately becoming perhaps the most 
useful soldier in the regiment. He escaped 
wounds and serious sickness, and was able 
to serve through every day of the regiment's 
existence. 

Two of the men made Second Lieutenants 
by promotion from the ranks while in San 
Antonio were John Greenway, a noted Yale 
foot-ball player and catcher on her base-ball 
nine and David Goodrich, for two years captain 
of the Harvard crew. They were young men, 
Goodrich having only just graduated ; while 
Greenway, whose father had served with 
honor in the Confederate Army, had been out 
of Yale three or four years. They were natural 
soldiers, and it would be well-nigh impossible 
to overestimate the amount of good they did 
the regiment. They were strapping fellows, 
entirely fearless, modest, and quiet. Their 
only thought was how to perfect themselves in 
4 



50 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

their own duties, and how to tak^e care of the 
men under them, so as to bring them to the 
highest point of soldierly perfection. I grew 
steadily to rely upon them, as men who could 
be counted upon with absolute certainty, not 
only in every emergency, but in all routine 
work. They were never so tired as not to 
respond wath eagerness to the slightest sug- 
gestion of doing something new, whether 
it was dangerous or merely difficult and 
laborious. They not merely did their duty, 
but were always on the watch to find out some 
new duty which they could construe to be 
theirs. Whether it was policing camp, or 
keeping guard, or preventing straggling on the 
march, or procuring food for the men, or see- 
ing that they took care of themselves in camp, 
or performing some feat of unusual hazard in 
the fight — no call was ever made upon them to 
which they did not respond with eager thank- 
fulness for being given the chance to answer it. 
Later on I worked them as hard as I knew how, 
and the regiment will always be their debtor. 

Greenway was from Arkansas. We could 
have filled up the whole regiment many times 
over from the South Atlantic and Gulf States 
alone, but were only able to accept a very 
few applicants. One of them was John 
Mcllhenny, of Louisiana ; a planter and 



TO CUBA. 51 

manufacturer, a big-game hunter and book- 
lover, who could have had a commission in 
the Louisiana troops, but who preferred to 
go as a trooper in the Rough Riders because 
he believed we would surely see fighting. He 
could have commanded any influence, social 
or political, he wished ; but he never asked a 
favor of any kind. He went into one of the 
New Mexican troops, and by his high qualities 
and zealous attention to duty speedily rose to 
a sergeantcy, and finally won his lieutenancy 
for gallantry in action. 

The tone of the officers' mess was very 
high. Everyone seemed to realize that he had 
undertaken most serious work. They all 
earnestly wished for a chance to distinguish 
themselves, and fully appreciated that they 
ran the risk not merely of death, but of what 
was infinitely worse — namely, failure at the 
crisis to perform duty well ; and they strove 
earnestly so to train themselves, and the men 
under them, as to minimize the possibility of 
such disgrace. Every officer and every man 
was taught continually to look forward to the 
day of battle eagerly, but with an entire sense 
of the drain that would then be made upon 
his endurance and resolution. They were 
also taught that, before the battle came, the 
rigorous performance of the countless irksome 



52 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

duties of the camp and the march was 
demanded from all alike, and that no excuse 
would be tolerated for failure to perform duty. 
Very few of the men had gone into the regi- 
ment lightly, and the fact that they did their 
duty so well may be largely attributed to the 
seriousness with which these eager, adven- 
turous young fellows approached their work. 
This seriousness, and a certain simple man- 
liness which accompanied it, had one very 
pleasant side. During our entire time of ser- 
vice, I never heard in the officers' mess a foul 
story or a foul word ; and though there was 
occasional hard swearing in moments of emer- 
gency, yet even this was the exception. 

The regiment attracted adventurous spirits 
from everywhere. Our chief trumpeter was a 
native American, our second trumpeter was 
from the Mediterranean — I think an Italian — 
who had been a soldier of fortune not only in 
Egypt, but in the French Army in Southern 
China. Two excellent men were Osborne, a 
tall AustraHan, who had been an officer in 
the New South Wales Mounted Rifles; and 
Cook, an Englishman, who had served in 
South Africa. Both, when the regiment dis- 
banded, were plaintive in expressing their 
fond regret that it could not be used against 
the Transvaal Boers 1 



TO CUBA. 53 

One of our best soldiers was a man whose 
real and assumed names I for obvious rea- 
sons conceal. He usually went by a nick- 
name which I will call Tennessee. He was a 
tall, gaunt fellow, with a quiet and distinctly 
sinister eye, who did his duty excellently, 
especially when a fight was on, and who, be- 
ing an expert gambler, always contrived to 
reap a rich harvest after pay-day. When the 
regiment was mustered out, he asked me to 
put a brief memorandum of his services on 
his discharge certificate, which I gladly did. 
He much appreciated this, and added, in ex- 
planation, " You see, Colonel, my real name 
isn't Smith, it's Yancy. I had to change it, 
because three "or four years ago I had a little 
trouble with a gentleman, and — er — well, in 
fact, I had to kill him ; and the District At- 
torney, he had it in for me, and so I just skipped 
the country ; and now, if it ever should be 
brought up against me, I should like to show 
your certificate as to my character ! " The 
course of frontier justice sometimes moves in 
unexpected zigzags ; so I did not express the 
doubt I felt as to whether my certificate that 
he had been a good soldier would help him 
much if he was tried for a murder commited 
three or four years previously. 

The men worked hard and faithfully. As 



54 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

a rule, in spite of the number of rough char- 
acters among them, they behaved very well. 
One night a few of them went on a spree, and 
proceeded " to paint San Antonio red." One 
was captured by the city authorities, and we 
had to leave him behind us in jail. The 
others we dealt with ourselves, in a way that 
prevented a repetition of the occurrence. 

The men speedily gave one another nick- 
names, largely conferred in a spirit of derision, 
their basis lying in contrast. A brave but 
fastidious member of a well-known Eastern club 
who was serving in the ranks, was christened 
" Tough Ike " ; and his bunkie, the man who 
shared his shelter-tent, who was a decidedly 
rough cow-puncher, gradually acquired the 
name of " The Dude." One unlucky and 
simple-minded cow-puncher, who had never 
been east of the great plains in his life, un- 
warily boasted that he had an aunt in New 
York, and ever afterward went by the name 
of "Metropolitan Bill." A huge red-headed 
Irishman was named " Sheeny Solomon." A 
young Jew who developed into one of the best 
fighters in the regiment accepted, with entire 
equanimity, the name of "Pork-chop." We 
had quite a number of professional gamblers, 
who, I am bound to say, usually made good 
soldiers. One, who was almost abnormally 



TO CUBA. 



55 



quiet and gentle, was called " Hell Roarer " ; 
while another, who in point of language and 
deportment was his exact antithesis, was chris- 
tened " Prayerful James." 

While the officers and men were learning 
their duties, and learning to know one another. 
Colonel Wood was straining every nerve to get 
our equipments — an effort which was compli- 
cated by the tendency of the Ordnance Bureau 
to send whatever we really needed by freight 
instead of express. Finally, just as the last 
rifles, revolvers, and saddles came, we were 
ordered by wire at once to proceed by train 
to Tampa. 

Instantly, all was joyful excitement. We 
had enjoyed San Antonio, and were glad that 
our regiment had been organized in the city 
where the Alamo commemorates the death 
fight of Crockett, Bowie, and their famous band 
of frontier heroes. All of us had worked hard, 
so that we had had no time to be homesick or 
downcast ; but we were glad to leave the hot 
camp, where every day the strong wind sifted 
the dust through everything, and to start for 
the gathering-place of the army which was to 
invade Cuba. Our horses and men were get- 
ting into good shape. We were well enough 
equipped to warrant our starting on the cam- 
paign, and every man was filled with dread of 



56 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

being out of the fighting. We had a pack- 
train of 150 mules, so we had close on to 
1,200 animals to carry. 

Of course, our train was split up into sec- 
tions, seven, all told ; Colonel Wood com- 
manding the first three, and I the last four. 
The journey by rail from San Antonio to 
Tampa took just four days, and I doubt if 
anybody who was on the trip will soon forget 
it. To occupy my few spare moments, I 
was reading M. Demolins's " Superiorite des 
Anglo-Saxons." M. Demolins, in giving the 
reasons why the English-speaking peoples are 
superior to those of Continental Europe, lays 
much stress upon the way in which " militar- 
ism " deadens the power of individual initia- 
tive, the soldier being trained to complete sup- 
pression of individual will, while his faculties 
become atrophied in consequence of his being 
merely a cog in a vast and perfectly ordered 
machine. I can assure the excellent French 
publicist that American " militarism," at least 
of the volunteer sort, has points of difference 
from the militarism of Continental Europe. 
The battalion chief of a newly raised American 
regiment, when striving to get into a war which 
the American people have undertaken with 
buoyant and light-hearted indifference to detail, 
has positively unlimited opportunity for the 



TO CUBA, 57 

display of " individual initiative," and is in no 
danger whatever either of suffering from un- 
healthy suppression of personal will, or of 
finding his faculties of self-help numbed by 
becoming a cog in a gigantic and smooth-run- 
ning machine. If such a battalion chief wants 
to get anything or go anywhere he must do it 
by exercising every pound of resource, inven- 
tiveness, and audacity he possesses. The 
help, advice, and superintendence he gets from 
outside will be of the most general, not to say 
superficial, character. If he is a cavalry officer, 
he has got to hurry and push the purchase of 
his horses, plunging into and out of the meshes 
of red-tape as best he can. He will have to 
fight for his rifles and his tents and his clothes. 
He will have to keep his men healthy largely 
by the light that nature has given him. When 
he wishes to embark his regiment, he will have 
to fight for his railway-cars exactly as he fights 
for his transport when it comes to going across 
the sea ; and on his journey his men will or 
will not have food, and his horses will or will 
not have water and hay, and the trains will or 
will not make connections, in exact corre- 
spondence to the energy and success of his own 
efforts to keep things moving straight. 

It was on Sunday, May 29th, that we 
marched out of our hot, windy, dusty camp to 



58 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

take the cars for Tampa. Colonel Wood went 
first, with the three sections under his special 
care. I followed with the other four. The 
railway had promised us a forty-eight hours' 
trip, but our experience in loading was enough 
to show that the promise would not be made 
good. There were no proper facilities for 
getting the horses on or off the cars, or for 
feeding or watering them ; and there was end- 
less confusion and delay among the railway 
officials. I marched my four sections over in 
the afternoon, the first three having taken the 
entire day to get off. We occupied the night. 
As far as the regiment itself was concerned, 
we worked an excellent system, Wood instruct- 
ing me exactly how to proceed so as to avoid 
confusion. Being a veteran campaigner, he 
had all along insisted that for such work as we 
had before us we must travel with the mini- 
mum possible luggage. The men had merely 
what they could carry on their own backs, and 
the officers very little more. My own roll of 
clothes and bedding could be put on my spare 
horse. The mule-train was to be used simply 
for food, forage, and spare ammunition. As 
it turned out, we were not allowed to take 
either it or the horses. 

It was dusk when I marched my long files 
of dusty troopers into the station-yard. I 



TO CUBA. 59 

then made all dismount, excepting the troop 
which I first intended to load. This was 
brought up to the first freight-car. Here 
every man unsaddled, and left his saddle, 
bridle, and all that he did not himself need in 
the car, each individual's property being 
corded together. A guard was left in the 
car, and the rest of the men took the naked 
horses into the pens to be fed and watered. 
The other troops were loaded in the same way 
in succession. With each section there were 
thus a couple of baggage-cars in which the 
horse-gear, the superfluous baggage, and the 
travel rations were carried ; and I also put 
aboard, not only at starting, but at every other 
opportunity, what oats and hay I could get, 
so as to provide against accidents for the 
horses. By the time the baggage-cars were 
loaded the horses of the first section had 
eaten and drunk their fill, and we loaded 
them on cattle-cars. The ofiicers of each 
troop saw to the loading, taking a dozen 
picked men to help them ; for some of the 
wild creatures, half broken and fresh from the 
ranges, were with difficulty driven up the 
chutes. Meanwhile I superintended not 
merely my own men, but the railroad men ; 
and when the delays of the latter, and their 
inability to understand what was necessary, 



6o THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

grew past bearing, I took charge of the trains 
myself, so as to insure the horse-cars of each 
section being coupled with the baggage-cars 
of that section. 

We worked until long past midnight before 
we got the horses and baggage aboard, and 
then found that for some reason the passenger- 
cars were delayed and would not be out for 
some hours. In the confusion and darkness 
men of the different troops had become scat- 
tered, and some had drifted off to the vile 
drinking-booths around the stockyards ; so I 
sent details to search the latter, while the 
trumpeters blew the assembly until the First 
Sergeants could account for all the men. Then 
the troops were arranged in order, and the men 
of each lay down where they were,by the tracks 
and in the brush, to sleep until morning. 

At dawn the passenger-trains arrived. The 
senior Captain of each section saw to it that 
his own horses, troopers, and baggage were 
together ; and one by one they started off, I 
taking the last in person. Captain Capron 
had at the very beginning shown himself to 
be simply invaluable, from his extraordinary 
energy, executive capacity, and mastery over 
men ; and I kept his section next mine, so 
that we generally cam,e together at the differ- 
ent yards. 



TO CUBA. 6l 

The next four days were very hot and very 
dusty. I tried to arrange so the sections 
would be far enough apart to allow each ample 
time to unload, feed, water, and load the 
horses at any stopping-place before the next 
section could arrive. There was enough delay 
and failure to make connections on the part 
of the railroad people to keep me entirely 
busy, not to speak of seeing at the stopping- 
places that the inexperienced officers got 
enough hay for their horses, and that the water 
given to them was both ample in quantity and 
drinkable. It happened that we usually made 
our longest stops at night, and this meant that 
we were up all night long. 

Two or three times a day I got the men 

buckets of hot coffee, and when we made a 

long enough stop they w^ere allowed liberty 

under the supervision of the non-commissioned 

officers. Some of them abused the privilege, 

and started to get drunk. These were 

promptly handled with the necessary severity, 

in the interest of the others ; for it was only 

by putting an immediate check to every form 

of lawlessness or disobedience among the few 

men who were inclined to be bad that we were 

enabled to give full liberty to those who would 

not abuse it. 

Everywhere the people came out to greet us 



62 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

and cheer us. They brought us flowers ; they 
brought us watermelons and other fruits, and 
sometimes jugs and pails of milk — all of which 
we greatly appreciated. We were travelling 
through a region where practically all the 
older men had served in the Confederate 
Army, and where the younger men had all 
their lives long drunk in the endless tales told 
by their elders, at home, and at the cross-roads 
taverns, and in the court-house squares, about 
the cavalry of Forrest and Morgan and the 
infantry of Jackson and Hood. The blood of 
the old men stirred to the distant breath of 
battle ; the blood of the young men leaped 
hot with eager desire to accompany us. The 
older women, who remembered the dreadful 
misery of war — the misery that presses its 
iron weight most heavily on the wives and the 
little ones — looked sadly at us ; but the young 
girls drove down in bevies, arrayed in their 
finery, to wave flags in farewell to the troopers 
and to beg cartridges and buttons as me- 
mentoes. Everywhere we saw the Stars and 
Stripes, and everywhere we were told, half- 
laughing, by grizzled ex-Confederates that 
they had never dreamed in the by-gone days of 
bitterness to greet the old flag as they now were 
greeting it, and to send their sons, as now they 
were sending them, to fight and die under it. 



TO CUBA. 63 

It was four days later that we disemarked in 
a perfect welter of confusion. Tampa lay in 
the pine-covered sand flats at the end of a 
one track railroad, and everything connected 
with both military and railroad matters was in 
an almost inextricable tangle. There was 
no one to meet us or to tell us where we were to 
camp, and no one to issue us food for the first 
twenty-four hours ; while the railroad people 
unloaded us wherever they pleased, or rather 
wherever the jam of all kinds of trains render- 
ed it possible. We had to buy the men 
food out of our own pockets, and to seize 
wagons in order to get our spare baggage 
taken to the camping ground which we at 
last found had been allotted to us. 

Once on the ground, we speedily got order 
out of confusion. Under Wood's eye the tents 
were put up in long streets, the picket-line 
of each troop stretching down its side of each 
street. The officers' quarters were at the upper 
ends of the streets, the company kitchens and 
sinks at the opposite ends. The camp was 
strictly policed, and drill promptly begun. For 
thirty-six hours we let the horses rest, drilling 
on foot, and then began the mounted drill again. 
The regiments with which we were after- 
ward to serve were camped near us, and the 
sandy streets of the little town were thronged 



64 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

with soldiers, almost all of them regulars ; for 
there were but one or two volunteer organiza- 
tions besides ourselves. The regulars wore 
the canonical dark blue of Uncle Sam. Our 
own men were clad in dusty brown blouses, 
trousers and leggings being of the same hue, 
while the broad-brimmed soft hat was of dark 
gray ; and very workmanlike they looked as, 
in column of fours, each troop trotted down 
its company street to form by squadron or 
battalion, the troopers sitting steadily in the 
saddles as they made their half-trained horses 
conform to the movement of the guidons. 

Over in Tampa town the huge winter hotel 
was gay with general-officers and their staffs, 
with women in pretty dresses, with newspaper 
correspondents by the score, with military 
attaches of foreign powers, and with onlookers 
of all sorts ; but we spent very little time there. 

We worked with the utmost industry, special 
attention being given by each troop-commander 
to skirmish-drill in the woods. Once or twice 
we had mounted drill of the regiment as a 
whole. The military attaches came out to look 
on — English, German, Russian, French, and 
Japanese. With the Englishman, Captain 
Arthur Lee, a capital fellow, we soon struck 
up an especially close friendship ; and we 
saw much of him throughout the campaign. 






TO CUBA. 65 



So we did o! several of the newspaper corre- 
spondents — Richard Harding Davis, John 
Fox, Jr., Caspar Whitney, and Frederic 
Remington. On Sunday Chaplain Brown, 
of Arizona, held service, as he did almost 
every Sunday during the campaign. 

There were but four or five days at Tampa, 
however. We were notified that the expedi- 
tion would start for destination unknown at 
once, and that we were to go with it ; but 
that our horses were to be left behind, and 
only eight troops of seventy men each taken. 
Our sorrow at leaving the horses was entirely 
outweighed by our joy at going; but it was 
very hard indeed to select the four troops that 
were to stay, and the men who had to be left 
behind from each of the troops that went. 
Colonel Wood took Major Brodie and myself 
to command the two squadrons, being allowed 
only two squadron commanders. The men 
who were left behind felt the most bitter heart- 
burn. To the great bulk of them I think it 
will be a life-long sorrow. I saw more than 
one, both among the officers and privates, 
burst into tears when he found he could not go. 
No outsider can appreciate the bitterness of 
the disappointment. Of course, really, those 
that stayed were entitled to precisely as much 
honor as those that went. Each man was 

5 



66 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

doing his duty, and much the hardest and 
most disagreeable duty was to stay. Credit 
should go with the performance of duty, and 
not with what is very often the accident of 
glory. All this and much more we explained, 
but our explanations could not alter the fact 
that some had to be chosen and some had to 
be left. One of the Captains chosen was 
Captain Maximilian Luna, who commanded 
Troop F, from New Mexico. The Captain's 
people had been on the banks of the Rio 
Grande before my forefathers came to the 
mouth of the Hudson or Wood's landed at 
Plymouth ; and he made the plea that it was 
his right to go as a representative of his race, 
for he was the only man of pure Spanish blood 
who bore a commission in the army, and he 
demanded the privilege of proving that his 
people were precisely as loyal Americans as 
any others. I was glad when it was decided 
to take him. 

It was the evening of June 7th when we 
suddenly received orders that the expedition 
was to start from Port Tampa, nine miles 
distant by rail, at daybreak the following 
morning ; and that if we were not aboard our 
transport by that time we could not go. We 
had no intention of getting left, and prepared 
at once for the scramble which was evidently 



TO CUBA. 67 

about to take place. As the number and 
capacity of the transports were known, or 
ought to have been known, and as the number 
and size of the regiments to go were also 
known, the task of allotting each regiment or 
fraction of a regiment to its proper transport, 
and arranging that the regiments and the trans- 
ports should meet in due order on the dock, 
ought not to have been difficult. However, 
no arrangements were made in advance ; and 
we were allowed to shove and hustle for our- 
selves as best we could, on much the same 
principles that had governed our preparations 
hitherto. 

We were ordered to be at a certain track 
with all our baggage at midnight, there to 
take a train for Port Tampa. At the ap- 
pointed time we turned up, but the train die* 
not. The men slept heavily, while Wood and 
I and various other officers wandered about 
in search of information which no one could 
give. We now and then came across a Brig- 
adier-General, or even a Major-General ; but 
nobody knew anything. Some regiments got 
aboard the trains and some did not, but as 
none of the trains started this made little 
difference. At three o'clock we received 
orders to march over to an entirely different 
track, and away we went. No train appeared 



68 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

on this track either ; but at six o'clock some 
coal-cars came by, and these we seized. By 
various arguments we persuaded the engineer 
in charge of the train to back us down the 
nine miles to Port Tampa, where we arrived 
covered with coal-dust, but with all our be- 
longings. 

The railway tracks ran out on the quay, 
and the transports, which had been anchored 
in mid-stream, were gradually being brought 
up along-side the quay and loaded. The 
trains were unloading wherever they happened 
to be, no attention whatever being paid to the 
possible position of the transport on which 
the soldiers were to go. Colonel Wood and | 
I jumped off and started on a hunt, which 
soon convinced us that we had our work cut 
out if we were to get a transport at all. From 
the highest General down, nobody could tell 
us where to go to find out what transport we 
were 'to have. At last we were informed that 
we were to hunt up the depot quartermaster, 
Colonel Humphrey. We found his office, 
where his assistant informed us that he didn't 
know where the Colonel was, but believed 
him to be asleep upon one of the transports. 
This seemed odd at such a time ; but so 
many of the methods in vogue were odd, that 
we were quite prepared to accept it as a fact. 



TO CUBA, 69 

However, it proved not to be such ; but for an 
hour Colonel Humphrey might just as well 
have been asleep, as nobody knew where he 
was and nobody could find him, and the quay 
was crammed with some ten thousand men, 
most of whom were working at cross pur- 
poses. 

At last, however, after over an hour's in- 
dustrious and rapid search through this swarm- 
ing ant-heap of humanity, Wood and I, who 
had separated, found Colonel Humphrey at 
nearly the same time and were allotted a trans- 
port — the Yucatan. She was out in mid- 
stream, so Wood seized a stray launch and 
boarded her. At the same time I happened 
to find out that she had previously been 
allotted to two other regiments — the Second 
Regular Infantry and the Seventy-first New 
York Volunteers, which latter regiment alone 
contained more men than could be put aboard 
her. Accordingly, I ran at full speed to our 
train ; and leaving a strong guard with the 
baggage, I double-quicked the rest of the regi- 
ment up to the boat, just in time to board 
her as she came into the quay, and then to 
hold her against the Second Regulars and the 
Seventy-first, who had arrived a little too late, 
being a shade less ready than we were in the 
matter of individual initiative. There was a 



yo THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

good deal of expostulation, but we had pos- 
session ; and as the ship could not contain 
half of the men who had been told to go- 
aboard her, the Seventy-first went away, as 
did all but four companies of the Second. 
These latter we took aboard. Meanwhile a 
General had caused our train to be unloaded 
at the end of the quay farthest from where 
the ship was ; and the hungry, tired men 
spent most of the day in the labor of bring- 
ing down their baggage and the food and 
ammunition. \ 

The officers' horses were on another boat, my 
own being accompanied by my colored body- 
servant, Marshall, the most faithful and loyal 
of men, himself an old soldier of the Ninth 
Cavalry. Marshall had been in Indian cam- 
paigns, and he christened my larger horse 
" Rain-in -the- Face," while the other, a pony, 
went by the name of " Texas." ; 

By the time that night fell, and our trans- 
port pulled off and anchored in midstream, 
we felt we had spent thirty-six tolerably ac-j 
tive hours. The transport was overloaded, 
the men being packed like sardines, not only 
below but upon the decks ; so that at night it 
was only possible to walk about by continually 
stepping over the bodies of the sleepers. The 
travel rations which had been issued to the 



TO CUBA. 71 

men for the voyage were not sufficient, be- 
cause the meat was very bad indeed; and 
when a ration consists of only four or five 
items, which taken together just meet the re- 
quirements of a strong and healthy man, the 
loss of one item is a serious thing. If we had 
been given canned corn-beef we would have 
been all right, but instead of this the soldiers 
were issued horrible stuff called " canned fresh 
beef." There was no salt in it. At the best 
it was stringy and tasteless ; at the worst it 
was nauseating. Not one-fourth of it was 
ever eaten at all, even when the men became 
very hungry. There were no facilities for the 
men to cook anything. There was no ice for 
them ; the water was not good ; and they had 
no fresh meat or fresh vegetables. 

However, all these things seemed of small 
inportance compared with the fact that we 
were really embarked, and were with the first 
expedition to leave our shores. But by next 
morning came the news that the order to sail 
had been countermanded, and that we were 
to stay where we were for the time being. 
What this meant none of us could understand. 
It turned out later to be due to the blunder of 
a naval officer who mistook some of our 
vessels for Spaniards, and by his report 
caused consternation in Washington, until 



72 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

by vigorous scouting on the part of our other 
ships the illusion was dispelled. 

Meanwhile the troop-ships, packed tight 
with their living freight, sweltered in the 
burning heat of Tampa Harbor. There was 
nothing whatever for the men to do, space 
being too cramped for amusement or for 
more drill than was implied in the manual of 
arms. In this we drilled them assiduously, 
and we also continued to hold school for both 
the officers and the non-commissioned officers. 
Each troop commander was regarded as re- 
sponsible for his own non-commissioned offi- 
cers, and Wood or myself simply dropped in 
to superintend, just as we did with the man- 
ual at arms. In the officers' school Captain 
Capron was the special instructor, and a most 
admirable one he was. 

The heat, the steaming discomfort, and the 
confinement, together with the forced inaction, 
were very irksome ; but everyone made the 
best of it, and there was little or no grumbling 
even among the men. All, from the highest 
to the lowest, were bent upon perfecting 
themselves according to their slender oppor- 
tunities. Every book of tactics in the regi- 
ment was in use from morning until night, 
and the officers and non-commissioned officers 
were always studying the problems presented 



TO CUBA. 73 

at the schools. About the only amusement 
was bathing over the side, in which we in- 
dulged both in the morning and evening. 
Many of the men from the Far West had 
never seen the ocean. One of them who 
knew how to swim was much interested in 
finding that the ocean water was not drinkable. 
Another, who had never in his life before 
seen any water more extensive than the head- 
stream of the Rio Grande, met with an acci- 
dent later in the voyage ; that is, his hat 
blew away while we were in mid-ocean, and I 
heard him explaining the accident to a friend 
in the following words : " Oh-o-h, Jim 1 Ma 
hat blew into the creek ! " So we lay for 
nearly a week, the vessels swinging around 
on their anchor chains, while the hot water of 
the bay flowed to and fro around them and 
the sun burned overhead. 

At last, on the evening of June 13, we re- 
ceived the welcome order to start. Ship 
after ship weighed anchor and went slowly 
ahead under half-steam for the distant mouth 
of the harbor, the bands playing, the flags 
flying, the rigging black with the clustered 
soldiers, cheering and shouting to those left 
behind on the quay and to their fellows on 
the other ships. The channel was very tor- 
tuous ; and we anchored before we had gone 



7 4 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

far down it, after coming within an ace of a 
bad collision with another transport. The 
next morning we were all again under way, 
and in the afternoon the great fleet steamed 
southeast until Tampa Light sank in the 
distance. 

For the next six days we sailed steadily 
southward and eastward through the wonder- 
ful sapphire seas of the West Indies. The 
thirty odd transports moved in long parallel 
lines, while ahead and behind and on their 
flanks the gray hulls of the war-ships surged 
through the blue water. We had every 
variety of craft to guard us, from the mighty 
battle-ship and swift cruiser to the converted 
yachts and the frail, venomous-looking tor- 
pedo-boats. The war-ships watched with 
ceaseless vigilance by day and night. When 
a sail of any kind appeared, instantly one of 
our guardians steamed toward it. Ordinarily, 
the torpedo-boats were towed. Once a 
strange ship steamed up too close, and in- 
stantly the nearest torpedo-boat was slipped 
like a greyhound from the leash, and sped 
across the water toward it ; but the stranger 
proved harmless, and the swift, delicate, 
death-fraught craft returned again. 

It was very pleasant, sailing southward 
through the tropic seas toward the unknown. 



TO CUBA. 75 

We knew not whither we were bound, nor 
what we were to do ; but we beHeved that 
the nearing future held for us many chances 
of death and hardship, of honor and renown. 
If we failed, we would share the fate of all 
who fail ; but we were sure that we would 
win, that we should score the first great tri- 
umph in a mighty world-movement. At night 
we looked at the new stars, and hailed the 
Southern Cross when at last we raised it 
above the horizon. In the daytime we 
drilled, and in the evening we held officers' 
school ; but there was much time when we 
had little to do, save to scan the wonderful 
blue sea and watch the flying-fish. Toward 
evening, when the officers clustered together 
on the forward bridge, the band of the Second 
Infantry played tune after tune, until on our 
quarter the glorious sun sunk in the red west, 
and, one by one, the lights blazed out on 
troop-ship and war-ship for miles ahead and 
astern, as they steamed onward through the 
brilliant tropic night. 

The men on the ship were young and strong, 
eager to face what lay hidden before them, 
eager for adventure where risk was the price 
of gain. Sometimes they talked of what they 
might do in the future, and wondered whether 
we were to attack Santiago or Porto Rico. 



76 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

At other times, as they lounged in groups, 
they told stories of their past — stories of the 
mining camps and the cattle ranges, of hunting 
bear and deer, of war-trails against the 
Indians, of lawless deeds of violence and the 
lawful violence by which they were avenged, 
of brawls in saloons, of shrewd deals in cattle 
and sheep, of successful quest for the precious 
metals ; stories of brutal wrong and brutal ap- 
petite, melancholy love-tales, and memories of 
nameless heroes — masters of men and tamers 
of horses. 

The officers, too, had many strange experi- 
ences to relate ; none, not even Llewellen or 
O'Neill, had been through what was better 
worth telling, or could tell it better, than 
Capron. He had spent years among the 
Apaches, the wildest and fiercest of tribes, 
and again and again had owed his life to his 
own cool judgment and extraordinary personal 
prowess. He knew the sign language, familiar 
to all the Indians of the mountains and the 
plains ; and it was curious to find that the 
signs for different animals, for water, for sleep 
and death, which he knew from holding inter- 
course with the tribes of the Southeast, were 
exactly like those which I had picked up on 
my occasional hunting or trading trips among 
the Sioux and Mandans of the North. He 



TO CUBA. 77 

was a great rifle shot and wolf hunter, and had 
many tales to tell of the deeds of gallant 
hounds and the feats of famous horses. He 
had handled his Indian scouts and dealt with 
the " bronco " Indians, the renegades from the 
tribes, in circumstances of extreme peril ; for 
he had seen the sullen, moody Apaches when 
they suddenly went crazy with wolfish blood- 
lust, and in their madness wished to kill 
whomever was nearest. He knew, so far as 
white man could know, their ways of thought, 
and how to humor and divert them when 
on the brink of some dangerous outbreak. 
Capron's training and temper fitted him to do 
great work in war ; and he looked forward with 
eager confidence to what the future held, for 
he was sure that for him it held either triumph 
or death. Death was the prize he drew. 

Most of the men had simple souls. They 
could relate facts, but they said very little about 
what they dimly felt. Bucky O'Neill, however, 
the iron-nerved, iron-willed fighter from 
Arizona, the Sheriff whose name was a by- 
word of terror to every wrong-doer ; white or 
red, the gambler who wdth unmoved face 
would stake and lose every dollar he had in 
the world — he alone, among his comrades, 
was a visionary, an articulate emotionalist. 
He was very quiet about it, never talking un- 



78 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

less he was sure of his Hstener ; but at night, 
when we leaned on the railing to look at the 
Southern Cross, he was less apt to tell tales of 
his hard and stormy past than he was to speak 
of the mysteries which lie behind courage, 
and fear, and love, behind animal hatred, 
and animal lust for the pleasures that have 
tangible shape. He had keenly enjoyed life, 
and he could breast its turbulent torrent as 
few men could ; he was a practical man, who 
knew how to wrest personal success from ad- 
verse forces, among money-makers, politicians, 
and desperadoes alike ; yet, down at bottom, 
what seemed to interest him most was the 
philosophy of life itself, of our understanding 
of it, and of the limitations set to that under- 
standing. But he was as far as possible from 
being a mere dreamer of dreams. A stanchly 
loyal and generous friend, he was also exceed- 
ingly ambitious on his own account. If, by 
risking his life, no matter how great the risk, 
he could gain high military distinction, he 
was bent on gaining it. He had taken so 
many chances when death lay on the hazard, 
that he felt the odds were now against him ; 
but, said he, " Who would not risk his life for 
a star ? " Had he lived, and had the war 
lasted, he would surely have won the eagle, if 
not the star. 



TO CUBA. 79 

We had a good deal of trouble with the 
transports, chiefly because they were not un- 
der the control of the navy. One of them was 
towing a schooner, and another a scow ; both, 
of course, kept lagging behind. Finally, when 
we had gone nearly the length of Cuba, the 
transport with the schooner sagged very far 
behind, and then our wretched transport was 
directed by General Shafter to fall out of line 
and keep her company. Of course, we exe- 
cuted the order, greatly to the wrath of 
Captain Clover, who, in the gunboat Bancroft, 
had charge of the rear of the column — for we 
could be of no earthly use to the other trans- 
port, and by our presence simply added just 
so much to Captain Clover's anxiety, as he had 
two transports to protect instead of one. 
Next morning the rest of the convoy were out 
of sight, but we reached them just as they 
finally turned. 

Until this we had steamed with the trade- 
wind blowing steadily in our faces ; but once 
we were well to eastward of Cuba, we ran 
southwest with the wind behind on our 
quarter, and we all knew that our destination 
was Santiago. On the morning of the 20th 
we were close to the Cuban coast. High 
mountains rose almost from the water's edge, 
looking huge and barren across the sea. We 



8o THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

sped onward past Guantanamo Bay, where 
we saw the little picket-ships of the fleet ; and 
in the afternoon we sighted Santiago Harbor, 
with the great war-ships standing off and on 
in front of it, gray and sullen in their war- 
paint. 

All next day we rolled and wallowed in the 
seaway, waiting until a decision was reached 
as to where we should land. On the morn- 
ing of June 2 2d the welcome order for land- 
ing came. 

We did the landing as we had done every- 
thing else — that is, in a scramble, each com- 
mander shifting for himself. The port at 
which we landed was called Daiquiri, a squalid 
little village where there had been a railway 
and iron-works. There were no facilities for 
landing, and the fleet did not have a quarter 
the number of boats it should have had 
for the purpose. All we could do was to 
stand in with the transports as close as pos- 
sible, and then row ashore in our own few 
boats and the boats of the war-ships. Luck 
favored our regiment. My former naval aide, 
while I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 
Lieutenant Sharp, was in command of the 
Vixen, a converted yacht ; and everything 
being managed on the go-as-you-please prin- 
ciple, he steamed by us and offered to help 



TO CUBA. 8 1 

put us ashore. Of course, we jumped at the 
chance. Wood and I boarded the Vixen, and 
there we got Lieutenant Sharp's black Cuban 
pilot, who told us he could take our transport 
right in to within a few hundred yards of the 
land. Accordingly, we put him aboard ; and 
in he brought her, gaining at least a mile and 
a half by the manoeuvre. The other trans- 
ports followed ; but we had our berth, and 
were all right. 

There was plenty of excitement to the land- 
ing. In the first place, the smaller war- 
vessels shelled Daiquiri, so as to dislodge 
any Spaniards who might be lurking in the 
neighborhood, and also shelled other places 
along the coast, to keep the enemy puzzled 
as to our intentions. Then the surf was high, 
and the landing difficult ; so that the task of 
getting the men, the ammunition, and provi- 
sions ashore was not easy. Each man carried 
three days' field rations and a hundred rounds 
of ammunition. Our regiment had accumu- 
lated two rapid-fire Colt automatic guns, the 
gift of Stevens, Kane, Tiffany, and one or 
two others of the New York men, and also a 
dynamite gun under the immediate charge of 
Sergeant Borrowe. To get these, and espe- 
cially the last, ashore, involved no little work 

and hazard. Meanwhile, from another trans- 
6 



^i 



82 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

port, our horses were being landed, together 
with the mules, by the simple process of 
throwing them overboard and letting them 
swim ashore, if they could. Both of Wood's 
got safely through. One of mine was drowned. 
The other, little Texas, got ashore all right. 
While I was superintending the landing 
at the ruined dock, with Bucky O'Neill, a 
boatful of colored infantry soldiers capsized, 
and two of the men went to the bottom ; 
Bucky O'Neill plunging in, in full uniform, to 
save them, but in vain. 

However, by the late afternoon we had all 
our men, with what ammunition and provi- 
sions they could themselves carry, landed, 
and were ready for anything that might turn 
up. 



J 



i 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 83 



III. 

GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT AT LAS GUASIMAS. 

JUST before leaving Tampa we had been 
brigaded with the First (white) and Tenth 
(colored) Regular Cavalry under Brigadier- 
General S. B. M. Young. We were the Second 
Brigade, the First Brigade consisting of the 
Third and Sixth (white), and the Ninth 
(colored) Regular Cavalry under Brigadier- 
General Sumner. The two brigades of the 
cavalry division were under Major-General 
Joseph Wheeler, the gallant old Confederate 
cavalry commander. 

General Young was — and is — as fine a type 
of the American fighting soldier as a man 
can hope to see. He had been in command, 
as Colonel, of the Yellowstone National Park, 
and I had seen a good deal of him in con- 
nection therewith, as I was President of the 
Boone and Crockett Club, an organization 
[devoted to hunting big game, to its preser- 
jvation and to forest preservation. Dur- 
ing the preceding winter, while he was 
n Washington, he had lunched with me at 



84 THE ROUGH RIDERS. \ 

the Metropolitan Club, Wood being one 
of the other guests. Of course, we talked 
of the war, which all of us present believed 
to be impending, and Wood and I told him 
we were going to make every effort to get in, 
somehow ; and he answered that we must be 
sure to get into his brigade, if he had one, 
and he would guarantee to show us fighting. 
None of us forgot the conversation. As soon 
as our regiment was raised General Young 
applied for it to be put in his brigade. We 
were put in ; and he made his word good ± 
for he fought and won the first fight on Cubar 
soil. 

Yet, even though under him, we should not 
have been in this fight at all if we had not 
taken advantage of the chance to disembark 
among the first troops, and if it had not been 
for Wood's energy in pushing our regiment t( 
the front. 

On landing we spent some active hours ii 
marching our men a quarter of a mile or s( 
inland, as boat-load by boat-load they disem- 
barked. Meanwhile one of the men, Knob^ 
lauch, a New Yorker, who was a great athlete 
and a champion swimmer, by diving in the 
surf off the dock, recovered most of the rifle^ 
which had been lost when the boat-load o\ 
colored cavalry capsized. The country woul< 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 85 

have offered very great difficulties to an at- 
tacking force had there been resistance. It 
\ was little but a mass of rugged and precipi- 
tous hills, covered for the most part by dense 
jungle. Five hundred resolute men could 
have prevented the disembarkation at very 
little cost to themselves. There had been 
about that number of Spaniards at Daiquiri 
that morning, but they had fled even before 
the ships began shelling. In their place we 
found hundreds of Cuban insurgents, a crew 
of as utter tatterdemalions as human eyes ever 
looked on, armed with every kind of rifle in 
all stages of dilapidation. It was evident, at 
a glance, that they would be no use in serious 
fighting, but it was hoped that they might be 
of service in scouting. From a variety of 
causes, however, they turned out to be nearly 
useless, even for this purpose, so far as the 
Santiago campaign was concerned. 

We were camped on a dusty, brush-covered 
flat, with jungle on one side, and on the other 
a shallow, fetid pool fringed with palm-trees. 
Huge land-crabs scuttled noisily through the 
underbrush, exciting much interest among the 
men. Camping was a simple matter, as each 
man carried all he had, and the officers had 
nothing. I took a light mackintosh and a 
tooth-brush. Fortunately, that night it did 



86 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

not rain ; and from the palmleaves we built 
shelters from the sun. 

General Lawton, a tall, fine-looking man, 
had taken the advance. A thorough soldier, 
he at once established outposts and pushed 
reconnoitring parties ahead on the trails. 
He had as little baggage as the rest of us. 
Our own Brigade-Commander, General Young, 
had exactly the same impedimenta that I had, 
namely, a mackintosh and a tooth-brush. 

Next morning we were hard at work trying 
to get the stuff unloaded from the ship, and 
succeeded in getting most of it ashore, but 
were utterly unable to get transportation for 
anything but a very small quantity. The 
great shortcoming throughout the campaign 
was the utterly inadequate transportation. If 
we had been allowed to take our mule-train, we 
could have kept the whole cavalry division 
supplied. 

In the afternoon word came to us to march. 
General Wheeler, a regular game-cock, was as 
anxious as Lawton to get first blood, and he 
was bent upon putting the cavalry division to 
the front as quickly as possible. Lawton's 
advance-guard was in touch with the Span- 
iards, and there had been a skirmish between 
the latter and some Cubans, who were re- 
pulsed. General Wheeler made a reconnois- 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 87 

sance in person, found out where the enemy 
was, and directed General Young to take our 
brigade and move forward so as to strike 
him next morning. He had the power to do 
this, as when General Shafter was afloat he 
had command ashore. 

I had succeeded in finding Texas, my sur- 
viving horse, much the worse for his fortnight 
on the transport and his experience in getting 
off, but still able to carry me. 

It was mid-afternoon and the tropic sun was 
beating fiercely down when Colonel Wood 
started our regiment — the First and Tenth 
Cavalry and some of the infantry regiments 
having already marched. Colonel Wood him- 
self rode in advance, while I led my squadron, 
and Major Brodie followed with his. It was 
a hard march, the hilly jungle trail being so 
narrow that often we had to go in single file. 
We marched fast, for Wood was bound to get 
us ahead of the other regiments, so as to be 
sure of our place in the body that struck the 
enemy next morning. If it had not been for 
his energy in pushing forward, we should 
certainly have missed the fight. As it was, 
we did not halt until we were at the extreme 
front. 

The men were not in very good shape for 
marching, and moreover they were really 



88 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

horsemen, the majority being cowboys who 
had never done much walking. The heat was 
intense and their burdens very heavy. Yet 
there was very little straggling. Whenever 
we halted they instantly took off their packs 
and threw themselves on their backs. Then 
at the word to start they w^ould spring into 
place again. The captains and lieutenants 
tramped along, encouraging the men by 
example and word. A good part of the time 
I was by Captain Llewellen, and was greatly 
pleased to see the way in which he kept his 
men up to their work. He never pitied or 
coddled his troopers, but he always looked 
after them. He helped them whenever he 
could, and took rather more than his full 
share of hardship and danger, so that his men 
naturally followed him with entire devotion. 
Jack Greenway was under him as lieutenant, 
and to him the entire march was nothing but 
an enjoyable outing, the chance of fight on 
the morrow simply adding the needed spice 
of excitement. 

It was long after nightfall when we tramped 
through the darkness into the squalid coast 
hamlet of Siboney. As usual when we made 
a night camp, we simply drew the men up in 
column of troops, and then let each man lie 
down where he was. Black thunder-clouds 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 89 

were gathering. Before they broke the fires 
were made and the men cooked their coffee 
and pork, some frying the hard-tack with the 
pork. The officers, of course, fared just as 
the men did. Hardly had we finished eating 
when the rain came, a regular tropic down- 
pour. We sat about, sheltering ourselves as 
best we could, for the hour or two it lasted ; 
then the fires were relighted and we closed 
around them, the men taking off their wet 
things to dry them, so far as possible, by the 
blaze. 

Wood had gone off to see General Young, 
as General Wheeler had instructed General 
Young to hit the Spaniards, who were about 
four miles away, as soon after daybreak as 
possible. Meanwhile I strolled over to Cap- 
tain Capron's troop. He and I, with his two 
lieutenants. Day and Thomas, stood around 
the fire, together with two or three non-com- 
missioned officers and privates ; among the 
latter were Sergeant Hamilton Fish and 
Trooper Elliot Cowdin, both of New York. 
Cowdin, together with two other troopers, 
Harry Thorpe and Munro Ferguson, had been 
on my Oyster Bay Polo Team some years 
before. Hamilton Fish had already shown 
himself one of the best non-commissioned 
officers we had. A huge fellow, of enormous 



90 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



Strength and endurance and dauntless courage, 
he took naturally to a soldier's life. He never 
complained and never shirked any duty of any 
kind, while his power over his men was great. 
So good a sergeant had he made that Cap- 
tain Capron, keen to get the best men under 
him, took him when he left Tampa — for 
Fish's troop remained behind. As we stood 
around the flickering blaze that night I caught 
myself admiring the splendid bodily vigor of 
Capron and Fish — the captain and the ser- 
geant. Their frames seemed of steel, to with- 
stand all fatigue ; they were flushed with 
health ; in their eyes shone high resolve and 
fiery desire. Two finer types of the fighting 
man, two better representatives of the Ameri- 
can soldier, there were not in the whole army, 
Capron was going over his plans for the fight 
when we should meet the Spaniards on the 
morrow, Fish occasionally asking a question. 
They were both filled with eager longing to 
show their mettle, and both were rightly 
confident that if they lived they would win 
honorable renown and would rise high in their 
chosen profession. Within twelve hours they 
both were dead. 

I had lain down when toward midnight 
Wood returned. He had gone over the whole 
plan with General Young. We were to start 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 91 

by sunrise toward Santiago, General Young 
taking four troops of the Tenth and four troops 
of the First up the road which led through 
the valley ; while Colonel Wood was to lead 
our eight troops along a hill-trail to the left, 
which joined the valley road about four miles 
on, at a point where the road went over a 
spur of the mountain chain and from thence 
went down hill toward Santiago. The Span- 
iards had their lines at the junction of the 
road and the trail. 

Before describing our part in the fight, it is 
necessary to say a word about General Young's 
share, for, of course, the whole fight was under 
his direction, and the fight on the right wing 
under his immediate supervision. General 
Young had obtained from General Castillo, 
the commander of the Cuban forces, a full de- 
scription of the country in front. General Cas- 
tillo promised Young the aid of eight hundred 
Cubans, if he made a reconnoissance in force 
to find out exactly what the Spanish strength 
was. This promised Cuban aid did not, how- 
ever, materialize, the Cubans, who had been 
beaten back by the Spaniards the day before, 
not appearing on the firing-line until the fight 
was over. 

General Young had in his immediate com* 
mand a squadron of the First Regular Cavalry, 



92 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

two hundred and forty-four strong, under the 
command of Major Bell, and a squadron of 
the Tenth Regular Cavalry, two hundred and 
twenty strong, under the command of Major 
Norvell. He also had two Hotchkiss moun- 
tain guns, under Captain Watson of the 
Tenth. He started at a quarter before six in 
the morning, accompanied by Captain A. L. 
Mills, as aide. It was at half-past seven that 
Captain Mills, with a patrol of two men in ad- 
vance, discovered the Spaniards as they lay 
across where the two roads came together, 
some of them in pits, others simply lying in the 
heavy jungle, while on their extreme right they 
occupied a big ranch. Where General Young 
struck them they held a high ridge a little to 
the left of his front, this ridge being separated 
by a deep ravine from the hill-trail still farther 
to the left, down w^hich the Rough Riders were 
advancing. That is, their forces occupied a 
range of high hills in the form of an obtuse 
angle, the salient being toward the space be- 
tween the American forces, while there were 
advance parties along both roads. There 
were stone breastworks flanked by block- 
houses on that part of the ridge where the 
two trails came together. The place was 
called Las Guasimas, from trees of that name 
in the neighborhood. 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 93 

General Young, who was riding a mule, 
carefully examined the Spanish position in 
person. He ordered the canteens of the 
troops to be filled, placed the Hotchkiss bat- 
tery in concealment about nine hundred yards 
from the Spanish lines, and then deployed the 
white regulars, with the colored regulars in 
support, having sent a Cuban guide to try to 
find Colonel Wood and warn him. He did 
not attack immediately, because he knew that 
Colonel Wood, having a more difficult route, 
would require a longer time to reach the posi- 
tion. During the delay General Wheeler 
arrived ; he had been up since long before 
dawn, to see that everything went well. 
Young informed him of the dispositions and 
plan of attack he made. General Wheeler ap- 
proved of them, and with excellent judgment left 
General Young a free hand to fight his battle. 
So, about eight o'clock Young began the 
fight with his Hotchkiss guns, he himself be- 
ing up on the firing-line. No sooner had the 
Hotchkiss one-pounders opened than the 
Spaniards opened fire in- return, most of the 
time firing by volleys executed in perfect time, 
almost as on parade. They had a couple of 
light guns, which our people thought were/^ 
quick firers. Thedenseness of the jungle^KlPd 
the fact that they used absolutely §j»dlteless 






94 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

powder, made it exceedingly difficult to place 
exactly where they were, and almost immediate- 
ly Young, who always liked to get as close as 
possible to his enemy, began to push his troops 
forward. They were deployed on both sides of 
the road in such thick jungle that it was only 
here and there that they could possiby see 
ahead, and some confusion, of course, ensued, 
the support gradually getting mixed with the 
advance. Captain Beck took A Troop of 
the Tenth in on the left, next Captain Gal- 
braith's troop of the First ; two other troops 
of the Tenth were on the extreme right. 
Through the jungle ran wire fences here and 
there, and as the troops got to the ridge they 
encountered precipitous heights. They were 
led most gallantly, as American regular officers 
always lead .heir men ; and the men followed 
their leaders with the splendid courage always 
shown by the American regular soldier. There 
was not a single straggler among them, and 
in not one instance was an attempt made 
by any trooper to fall out in order to assist 
the w^ounded or carry back the dead, while so 
cool were they and so perfect their fire disci- 
pline,that in the entire engagement the expen- 
diture of ammunition was not over ten rounds 
per man. Major Bell, who commanded the 
squadron, had his leg broken by a shot as he 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 95 

was leading his men. Captain Wainwright 
succeeded to the command of the squadron. 
Captain Knox was shot in the abdomen. 
He continued for some time giving orders to 
his troops, and refused to allow a man in the 
firing-line to assist him to the rear. His First 
Lieutenant, Byram, was himself shot, but con- 
tinued to lead his men until the wound and 
the heat overcame him and he fell in a faint. 
The advance was pushed forward under Gen- 
eral Young's eye with the utmost energy, until 
the enemy's voices could be heard in the in- 
trenchments. The Spaniards kept up a very 
hea\y firing, but the regulars would not be 
denied, and as they climbed the ridges the 
Spaniards broke and fled. 

Meanwhile, at six o'clock, the Rough Riders 
began their advance. We first had to climb 
a very steep hill. Many of the men, foot-sore 
and weary from their march of the preceding 
day, found the pace up this hill too hard, and 
either dropped their bundles or fell out of 
line, with the result that we went into action 
with less than five hundred men — as, in addi- 
tion to the stragglers, a detachment had been 
left to guard the baggage on shore. At the 
time I was rather inclined to grumble to my- 
self about Wood setting so fast a pace, but 
when the fight began I realized that it had 



96 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

been absolutely necessary, as otherwise we 
should have arrived late and the regulars 
would have had very hard work indeed. 

Tiffany, by great exertions, had corralled a 
couple of mules and was using them to trans- 
port the Colt automatic guns in the rear of 
the regiment. The dynamite gun was not 
with us, as mules for it could not be obtained 
in time. 

Captain Capron's troop was in the lead, it 
being chosen for the most responsible and 
dangerous position because of Capron's capac- 
ity. Four men, headed by Sergeant Hamilton 
Fish, went first ; a support of twenty men 
followed some distance behind ; and then 
came Capron and the rest of his troop, followed 
by Wood, with whom General Young had sent 
Lieutenants Smedburg and Rivers as aides. 
I rode close behind, at the head of the other 
three troops of my squadron, and then came 
Brodie at the head of his squadron. The trail 
was so narrow that for the most part the men 
marched in single file, and it was bordered by 
dense, tangled jungle, through which a man 
could with difficulty force his way ; so that to 
put out flankers was impossible, for they could 
not possibly have kept up with the march of 
the column. Every man had his canteen full. 
There was a Cuban guide at the head of 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 97 

the column, but he ran away as soon as the 
fighting began. There were also with us, at 
the head of the column, two men who did not 
run away, who, though non-combatants — 
newspaper correspondents — showed as much 
gallantry as any soldier in the field. They 
were Edward Marshall and Richard Harding 
Davis. 

After reaching the top of the hill the walk 
was very pleasant. Now and then we came 
to glades or rounded hill-shoulders, whence 
we could look off for some distance. The 
tropical forest was very beautiful, and it was 
a delight to see the strange trees, the splendid 
royal palms and a tree which looked like 
a flat-topped acacia, and which was covered 
with a mass of brilliant scarlet flowers. We 
heard many bird-notes, too, the cooing of 
doves and the call of a great brush cuckoo. 
Afterward we found that the Spanish guerillas 
imitated these bird-calls, but the sounds we 
heard that morning, as we advanced through 
the tropic forest, were from birds, not guerillas, 
until we came right up to the Spanish lines. 
It was very beautiful and very peaceful, and 
it seemed more as if we were off on some 
hunting excursion than as if we were about to 
go into a sharp and bloody little fight. 

Of course, we accommodated our move- 
7 



98 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

ments to those of the men in front. After 
marching for somewhat over an hour, we sud- 
denly came to a halt, and immediately after- 
ward Colonel Wood sent word down the line 
that the advance guard had come upon a 
Spanish outpost. Then the order was passed 
to fill the magazines, which was done. 

The men were totally unconcerned, and I 
do not think they realized that any fighting 
was at hand ; at any rate, I could hear the 
group nearest me discussing in low murmurs, 
not the Spaniards, but the conduct of a cer- 
tain cow-puncher in quitting work on a ranch 
and starting a saloon in some New Mexican 
town. In another minute, however, Wood 
sent me orders to deploy three troops to the 
right of the trail, and to advance when we 
became engaged ; while, at the same time, the 
other troops, under Major Brodie, were de- 
ployed to the left of the trail where the ground 
was more open than elsewhere — one troop be- 
ing held in reserve in the centre, besides the 
reserves on each wing. Later all the reserves 
were put into the firing-line. 

To the right the jungle was quite thick, and 
we had barely begun to deploy when a crash 
in front announced that the fight was on. It 
was evidently very hot, and L Troop had its 
hands full ; so I hurried my men up abreast 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 99 

of them. So thick was the jungle that it was 
very difficult to keep together, especially when 
there was no time for delay, and while I got 
up Llewellen's troops and Kane's platoon of 
K Troop, the rest of K Troop under Captain 
Jenkins which, with Bucky O'Neill's troop, 
made up the right wing, were behind, and it 
was some time before they got into the fight 
at all. 

Meanwhile I had gone forward with Llewel- 
len, Greenway, Kane and their troopers until 
we came out on a kind of shoulder, jutting 
over a ravine, which separated us from a great 
ridge on our right. It was on this ridge that 
the Spaniards had some of their intrench- 
ments, and it was just beyond this ridge that 
the Valley Road led, up which the regulars 
were at that very time pushing their attack ; 
but, of course, at the moment we knew noth- 
ing of this. The effect of the smokeless 
powder was remarkable. The air seemed full 
of the rustling sound of the Mauser bullets, 
for the Spaniards knew the trails by which we 
were advancing, and opened heavily on our 
position. Moreover, as we advanced, we were 
of course, exposed, and they could see us and 
fire. But they themselves were entirely in- 
visible. The jungle covered everything, and 
not the faintest trace of smoke was to be seen 



lOO THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

in any direction to indicate from whence the 
bullets came. It was sometime before the 
men fired ; Llewellen, Kane, and I anxiously 
studying the ground to see where our oppo- 
nents were and utterly unable to find out. 

We could hear the faint reports of the 
Hotchkiss guns and the reply of two Spanish 
guns, and the Mauser bullets were singing 
through the trees over our heads, making a 
noise like the humming of telephone wires ; 
but exactly where they came from we could 
not tell. The Spaniards were firing high and 
for the most part by volleys, and their shoot- 
ing was not very good, which perhaps was not 
to be wondered at, as they were a long way off. 
Gradually, however, they began to get the 
range and occasionally one of our men would 
crumple up. In no case did the man make 
any outcry when hit, seeming to take it as a 
matter of course ; at the outside, making only 
such a remark as, " Well, I got it that time." 
With hardly an exception, there was no sign 
of flinching. I say with hardly an exception, 
for though I personally did not see an instance, 
and though all the men at the front behaved 
excellently, yet there were a very few men 
who lagged behind and drifted back to the 
trail over which we had come. The character 
of the fight put a premium upon such conduct 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. loi 

and afforded a very severe test for raw troops ; 
because the jungle was so dense that as we 
advanced in open order, every man was, from 
time to time, left almost alone and away from 
the eyes of his officers. There was unlimited 
opportunity for dropping out without attracting 
notice, while it was peculiarly hard to be ex- 
posed to the fire of an unseen foe, and to see 
men dropping under it, and yet to be, for some 
time, unable to return it, and also to be entire- 
ly ignorant of what was going on in any other 
part of the field. 

It was Richard Harding Davis who gave us 
our first opportunity to shoot back with effect. 
He was behaving precisely like my officers, 
being on the extreme front of the line, and 
taking every opportunity to study with his 
glasses the ground where we thought the 
Spaniards were. I had tried some volley firing 
at points where I rather doubtfully believed 
the Spaniards to be, but had stopped firing 
and was myself studying the jungle-covered 
mountain ahead with my glasses, when Davis 
suddenly said : *' There they are. Colonel ; 
look over there ; I can see their hats near that 
glade," pointing across the valley to our right. 
In a minute I, too, made out the hats, and 
then pointed them out to three or four of our 
best shots, giving them my estimate of the 



102 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

range. For a minute or two no result followed, 
and I kept raising the range, at the same time 
getting more men on the firing-line. Then, 
evidently, the shots told, for the Spaniards 
suddenly sprang out of the cover through 
which we had seen their hats, and ran to an- 
other spot ; and we could now make out a 
large number of them. 

I accordingly got all of my men up in line 
and began quick firing. In a very few minutes 
our bullets began to do damage, for the Span- 
iards retreated to the left into the jungle, and 
we lost sight of them. At the same moment 
a big body of men who, it afterward turned 
out, were Spaniards, came in sight along the 
glade, following the retreat of those whom we 
had just driven from the trenches. We sup- 
posed that there was a large force of Cubans 
with General Young, not being aware that 
these Cubans had failed to make their appear- 
ance, and as it was impossible to tell the Cu- 
bans from the Spaniards, and as we could not 
decide whether these were Cubans following 
the Spaniards we had put to flight, or merely 
another troop of Spaniards retreating after 
the first (which was really the case) we dared 
not fire, and in a minute they had passed the 
glade and were out of sight. 

At every halt we took advantage of the cover, 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 103 

sinking down behind any mound, bush, or 
tree-trunk in the neighborhood. The trees, of 
course, furnished no protection from the Mau- 
ser bullets. Once I was standing behind a 
large palm with my head out to one side, very 
fortunately ; for a bullet passed through the 
palm, filling my left eye and ear with the dust 
and splinters. 

No man was allowed to drop out to help the 
wounded. It was hard to leave them there in 
the jungle, where they might not be found 
again until the vultures and the land-crabs 
came, but war is a grim game and there was 
no choice. One of the men shot was Harry 
Heffner of G. Troop, who was mortally 
wounded through the hips. He fell without 
uttering a sound, and two of his companions 
dragged him behind a tree. Here he propped 
himself up and asked to be given his canteen 
and his rifle, which I handed to him. He 
then again began shooting, and continued 
loading and firing until the line moved forward 
and we left him alone, dying in the gloomy 
shade. When we found him again, after the 
fight, he was dead. 

At one time, as I was out of touch with 
that part of my wing commanded by Jenkins 
and O'Neill, I sent Greenway, with Sergeant 
Russell, a New Yorker, and trooper Rowland, 



104 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

a New Mexican cow-puncher, down in the 
valley to find out where they were. To do 
this the three had to expose themselves to a 
very severe fire, but they were not men to 
whom this mattered. Russell was killed ; the 
other two returned and reported to me the 
position of Jenkins and O'Neill. They then 
resumed their places on the firing-line. After 
awhile I noticed blood coming out of Row- 
land's side and discovered that he had been 
shot, although he did not seem to be taking 
any notice of it. He said the wound was 
only slight, but as I saw he had broken a rib, 
I told him to go to the rear to the hospital. 
After some grumbling he went, but fifteen 
minutes later he was back on the firing-line 
again and said he could not find the hospital 
— which I doubted. However, I then let 
him stay until the end of the fight. 

After we had driven the Spaniards off 
from their position to our right, the firing 
seemed to die away so far as we were con- 
cerned, for the bullets no longer struck around 
us in such a storm as before, though along 
the rest of the line the battle was as brisk as 
ever. Soon we saw troops appearing across 
the ravine, not very far from where we had 
seen the Spaniards whom we had thought 
might be Cubans. Again we dared not fire. 



GENERAL YOUNCS FIGHT. 105 

and carefully studied the new-comers with our 
glasses ; and this time we were right, for we 
recognized our own cavalry-men. We were 
by no means sure that they recognized us, 
however, and were anxious that they should, 
but it was very difficult to find a clear spot in 
the jungle from which to signal ; so Sergeant 
Lee of Troop K climbed a tree and from its 
snmmit waved the troop guidon. They 
waved their guidon back, and as our right 
wing was now in touch with the regulars, I 
left Jenkins and O'Neill to keep the connec- 
tion, and led Llewellen's troop back to the 
path to join the rest of the regiment, which 
was evidently still in the thick of the fight. 
I was still very much in the dark as to where 
the main body of the Spanish forces were, or 
exactly what lines the battle was following, 
and was very uncertain what I ought to do ; 
but I knew it could not be wrong to go for- 
ward, and I thought I would find Wood and 
then see what he washed me to do. I was in 
a mood to cordially welcome guidance, for it 
was most bewildering to fight an enemy whom 
one so rarely saw. 

I had not seen Wood since the beginning of 
the skirmish, when he hurried forward. When 
the firing opened some of the men began to 
curse. *' Don't swear — shoot 1 " growled 



1 06 THE R UGH RIDERS. 

Wood, as he strode along the path leading 
his horse, and everyone laughed and became 
cool again. The Spanish outposts were very 
near our advance guard, and some minutes 
of the hottest kind of firing followed before 
they were driven back and slipped off through 
the jungle to their main lines in the rear. 

Here, at the very outset of our active 
service, we suffered the loss of two as gallant 
men as ever wore uniform. Sergeant Hamil- 
ton Fish at the extreme front, while holding 
the point up to its work and firing back where 
the Spanish advance guards lay, was shot and 
instantly killed ; three of the men with him 
were likewise hit. Captain Capron, leading 
the advance guard in person, and displaying 
equal courage and coolness in the way that 
he handled them, was also struck, and died 
a few minutes afterward. The command of 
the troop then devolved upon the First Lieuten- 
ant, young Thomas. Like Capron, Thomas 
was the fifth in line from father to son who 
had served in the American army, though in 
his case it was in the volunteer and not the 
regular service ; the four preceding gen- 
erations had furnished soldiers respectively 
to the Revolutionary War, the War of 18 12, 
the Mexican War, and the Civil War. In a few 
minutes Thomas was shot through the leg, and 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 107 

the command devolved upon the Second 
Lieutenant, Day (a nephew of '' Albemarle " 
Gushing, he who sunk the great Confederate 
ram). Day, who proved himself to be one of 
our most efficient officers, continued to handle 
the men to the best possible advantage, and 
brought them steadily forward. L Troop 
was from the Indian Territory. The whites, 
Indians, and half-breeds in it, all fought with 
equal courage. Captain McClintock was 
hurried forward to its relief with his Troop B 
of Arizona men. In a few minutes he was 
shot through the leg and his place was taken 
by his first Lieutenant, Wilcox, who handled 
his men in the same soldierly manner that 
Day did. 

Among the men who showed marked 
courage and coolness was the tall color-ser- 
geant, Wright ; the colors w^ere shot through 
three times. 

When I had led G Troop back to the trail 
I ran ahead of them, passing the dead and 
wounded men of L Troop, passing young 
Fish as he lay with glazed eyes under the 
rank tropic growth to one side of the trail. 
When I came to the front I found the men 
spread out in a very thin skirmish line, ad- 
vancing through comparatively open ground, 
each man taking advantage of what cover he 




M 



1 08 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

could, while Wood strolled about leading his 
horse, Brodie being close at hand. How 
Wood escaped being hit, I do not see, and 
still less how his horse escaped. I had left 
mine at the beginning of the action, and was 
only regretting that I had not left my sword 
with it, as it kept getting between my legs 
when I was tearing my way through the jungle. 
I never wore it again in action. Lieutenant 
Rivers was with Wood, also leading his 
horse. Smedburg had been sent off on the 
by no means pleasant task of establishing 
communications with Young. 

Very soon after I reached the front, Brodie 
J was hit, the bullet shattering one arm and 
-^ , whirling him around as he stood. He had 
kept on the extreme front all through, his pres- 
ence and example keeping his men entirely 
steady, and he at first refused to go to the 
rear ; but the wound was very painful, and 
he became so faint that he had to be sent. 
Thereupon, Wood directed me to take charge 
of the left wing in Brodie's place, and to 
bring it forward ; so over I went. 

I now had under me Captains Luna, MuUer, 
and Houston, and I began to take them for- 
ward, well spread out, through the high grass 
of a rather open forest. I noticed Goodrich, 
of Houston's troop, tramping along behind 



k^l'Efc'-'' 



GENERAL YOUNGS FIGHT. 109 

his men, absorbed in making them keep at 
good intervals from one another and fire 
slowly with careful aim. As I came close 
up to the edge of the troop, he caught a 
glimpse of me, mistook me for one of his own 
skirmishers who was crowding in too closely, 
and called out, " Keep your interval, sir ; 
keep your interval, and go forward." 

A perfect hail of bullets was sweeping over 
us as we advanced. Once I got a glimpse of 
some Spaniards, apparently retreating, far in 
the front, and to our right, and we fired a 
couple of rounds after them. Then I became 
convinced, after much anxious study, that we 
were being fired at from some large red-tiled 
buildings, part of a ranch on our front. 
Smokeless powder, and the thick cover in our 
front, continued to puzzle us, and I more 
than once consulted anxiously the officers as 
to the exact whereabouts of our opponents. 
I took a rifle from a wounded man and began 
to try shots with it myself. It was very hot 
and the men were getting exhausted, though 
at this particular time we were not suffering 
heavily from bullets, the Spanish fire going 
high. As we advanced, the cover became a 
little thicker and I lost touch of the main 
body under Wood ; so I halted and we fired 
industriously at the ranch buildings ahead of 



1 1 o THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

US, some five hundred yards off. Then we 
heard cheering on the right, and I supposed 
that this meant a charge on the part of Wood's 
men, so I sprang up and ordered the men 
to rush the buildings ahead of us. They came 
forward with a will. There was a moment's 
heavy firing from the Spaniards, which all 
went over our heads, and then it ceased en- 
tirely. When we arrived at the buildings, 
panting and out of breath, they contained j 
nothing but heaps of empty cartridge shells 
and two dead Spaniards, shot through the 
head. 

The country all around us was thickly for- 
ested, so that it was very difficult to see any 
distance in any direction. The firing had 
now died out, but I was still entirely uncer- 
tain as to exactly what had happened. I did 
not know whether the enemy had been driven 
back or whether it was merely a lull in the 
fight, and we might be attacked again ; nor 
did I know what had happened in any other 
part of the line, while as I occupied the ex- 
treme left, I was not sure whether or not my 
flank was in danger. At this moment one of 
our men, who had dropped out, arrived with 
the information (fortunately false) that Wood 
was dead. Of course, this meant that the 
command devolved upon me, and I hastily 



GENERAL YOUNGS FIGHT, m 

set about taking charge of the regiment. I 
had been particularly struck by the coolness 
and courage shown by Sergeants Dame and 
Mcllhenny, and sent them out with small 
pickets to keep watch in front and to the left of 
the left wing. I sent other men to fill the can- 
teens with water, and threw the rest out in a 
long line in a disused sunken road, which gave 
them cover, putting two or three wounded 
men, who had hitherto kept up with the fight- 
ing-line, and a dozen men who were suffering 
from heat exhaustion — for the fighting and 
running under that blazing sun through the 
thick dry jungle was heart-breaking — into 
the ranch buildings. Then I started over 
toward the main body, but to my delight en- 
countered Wood himself, who told me the 
fight was over and the Spaniards had re- 
treated. He also informed me that other 
troops were just coming up. The first to ap- 
pear was a squadron of the Ninth Cavalry, 
under Major Dimick, which had hurried up 
to get into the fight, and was greatly disap- 
pointed to find it over. They took post in 
front of our lines, so that our tired men were 
able to get a rest, Captain McBlain, of the 
Ninth, good-naturedly giving us some points 
as to the best way to station our outposts. 
Then General Chaffee, rather glum at not 



112 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

having been in the fight himself, rode up at 
the head of some of his infantry, and I 
marched my squadron back to where the rest 
of the regiment was going into camp, just 
where the two trails came together, and be- 
yond — that is, on the Santiago side of — the 
original Spanish lines. 

The Rough Riders had lost eight men killed 
and thirty-four wounded, aside from two or 
three who were merely scratched and whose 
wounds were not reported. The First Cav- 
alry, white, lost seven men killed and eight 
wounded ; the Tenth Cavalry, colored, one 
man killed and ten wounded ; so, out of 964 
men engaged on our side, 16 were killed and 
52 wounded. The Spaniards were under 
General Rubin, with, as second in command. 
Colonel Alcarez. They had two guns, and 
eleven companies of about a hundred men 
each : three belonging to the Porto Rico reg- 
iment, three to the San Fernandino, two 
to the Talavero, two being so-called mobilized 
companies from the mineral districts, and one 
a company of engineers ; over twelve hun- 
dred men in all, together with two guns.* 

* See Lieutenant Miiller y Tejeiro, " Combates y Capitulacion de 
Santiago de Cuba," page 136. The Lieutenant speaks as if only 
one echelon, of seven companies and two guns, was engaged on the 
24th. The official report says distinctly, " General Rubin's column," 
which consisted of the companies detailed above. By turning to 
page 146, where Lieutenant Tejeiro enumerates the strength of the 
various companies, it will be seen that they averaged over jio men 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 113 

General Rubin reported that he had repulsed 
the American attack, and Lieutenant Tejeiro 
states in his book that General Rubin forced 
the Americans to retreat, and enumerates the 
attacking force as consisting of three regular 
regiments of infantry, the Second Massachu- 
setts and the Seventy-first New York (not one 
of which fired a gun or were anywhere near 
the battle), in addition to the sixteen dis- 
mounted troops of cavalry. In other words, 
as the five infantry regiments each included 
twelve companies, he makes the attacking 
force consist of just five times the actual 
amount. As for the " repulse," our line never 
went back ten yards in any place, and the ad- 
vance was practically steady ; while an hour 
and a half after the fight began we were in 
complete possession of the entire Spanish 
position, and their troops were fleeing in 
masses down the road, our men being too 
exhausted to follow them. 

General Rubin also reports that he lost but 
seven men killed. This is certainly incorrect, 
for Captain O'Neill and I went over the 
ground very carefully and counted eleven 

apiece ; this probably does not include officers, and is probably an 
under-statement anyhow. On page 261 he makes the Spanish loss 
at Las Guasimas. which he calls Sevilla, g killed and 27 wounded. 
Very possibly he includes only the Spanish regulars; two of the 
Spaniards we slew, over on the left, were in brown, instead of tha 
light blue of the regulars, and were doubtless guerillas. 

8 



1 1 4 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

dead Spaniards, all of whom were actually 
buried bv our burying squads. There were 
probably two or three men whom we missed, 
but I think that our official reports are incor- 
rect in stating that forty-two dead Spaniards 
were found ; this being based upon reports 
in which I think some of the Spanish 
dead were counted two or three times. In- 
deed, I should doubt whether their loss was 
as heavy as ours, for they were under cover, 
while we advanced, often in the open, and 
their main lines fled long before we could get 
to close quarters. It was a very difficult 
country, and a force of good soldiers reso- 
lutely handled could have held the pass with 
ease against two or three times their number. 
As it was, with a force half of regulars and 
half of volunteers, we drove out a superior 
number of Spanish regular troops, strongly 
posted, without suffering a very heavy loss. 
Although the Spanish fire was very heavy, it 
does not seem to me it was very well directed ; 
and though they fired with great spirit while 
we merely stood at a distance and fired at 
them, they did not show much resolution, and 
when we advanced, always went back long be- 
fore there was any chance of our coming into 
contact with them. Our men behaved very 
well indeed — white regulars, colored regulars, 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT, 115 

and Rough Riders alike. The newspaper 
press failed to do full justice to the white 
regulars, in my opinion, from the simple 
reason that everybody knew that they would 
fight, whereas there had been a good deal of 
question as to how the Rough Riders, who 
were volunteer troops, and the Tenth Cavalry, 
who were colored, would behave ; so there 
was a tendency to exalt our deeds at the ex- 
pense of those of the First Regulars, whose 
courage and good conduct were taken for 
granted. It was a trying fight beyond what 
the losses show, for it is hard upon raw sol- 
diers to be pitted against an unseen foe, and 
to advance steadily when their comrades are 
falling around them, and when they can only 
occasionally see a chance to retaliate. Wood's 
experience in fighting Apaches stood him in 
good stead. An entirely raw man at the head 
of the regiment, conducting, as Wood was, 
what was practically an independent fight, 
would have been in a very trying position. 
The fight cleared the way toward Santiago, 
and we experienced no further resistance. 

That afternoon we made camp and dined, 
subsisting chiefly on a load of beans which we 
found on one of the Spanish mules which had 
been shot. We also looked after the wounded. 
Dr. Church had himself gone out to the fir- 



Il6 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

ing-line during the fight, and carried to the 
rear some of the worse wounded on his back 
or in his arms. Those who could walk had 
walked in to where the little field-hospital of 
the regiment was established on the trail. 
We found all our dead and all the badly 
wounded. Around one of the latter the big, 
hideous land-crabs had gathered in a grew- 
some ring, waiting for life to be extinct. 
One of our own men and most of the Spanish 
dead had been found by the vultures before we 
got to them ; and their bodies were mangled, 
the eyes and wounds being torn. 

The Rough Rider who had been thus treat- 
ed was in Bucky O'Neill's troop ; and as we 
looked at the body, O'Neill turned to me and 
asked, " Colonel, isn't it Whitman who says of 
the vultures that ' they pluck the eyes of princes 
and tear the flesh of kings ' ? " I answered 
that I could not place the quotation. Just a 
week afterward we were shielding his own 
body from the birds of prey. 

One of the men who fired first, and who dis- 
played conspicuous gallantry, was a Cherokee 
halfbreed, who was hit seven times, and of 
course had to go back to the States. Before 
he rejoined us at Montauk Point he had gone 
through a little private war of his own ; for 
on his return he found that a cow-boy had 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 117 

gone off with his sweetheart, and in the fight 
that ensued he shot his rival. Another man 
of L Troop who also showed marked gallantry 
was Elliot Cowdin. The men of the plains 
and mountains were trained by life-long habit 
to look on life and death with iron philo- 
sophy. As I passed by a couple of tall, lank, 
Oklahoma cowpunchers, I heard one say, 
" Well, some of the boys got it in the neck ! " 
to which the other answered with the grim 
plains proverb of the South : " Many a good 
horse dies." 

Thomas Isbell, a half-breed Cherokee in the 
squad under Hamilton Fish, was among the 
first to shoot and be shot at. He was wound- 
ed no less than seven times. The first wound 
was received by him two minutes after he had 
fired his first shot, the bullet going through 
his neck. The second hit him in the left 
thumb. The third struck near his right hip, 
passing entirely through the body. The 
fourth bullet (which was apparently from a 
Remington and not from a Mauser) went into 
his neck and lodged against the bone, being 
afterward cut out. The fifth bullet again hit 
his left hand. The sixth scraped his head 
and the seventh his neck. He did not receive 
all of the wounds at the same time, over half 
an hour elapsing between the first and the last. 



Ii8 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Up to receiving the last wound he had de- 
clined to leave the firing-line, but by that time 
he had lost so much blood that he had to be 
sent to the rear. The man's wiry toughness 
was as notable as his courage. 

We improvised litters, and carried the more 
sorely wounded back to Siboney that afternoon 
and the next morning ; the others walked. 
One of the men who had been most severely 
wounded was Edward Marshall, the corre- 
spondent, and he showed as much heroism as 
any soldier in the whole army. He was shot 
through the spine, a terrible and very painful 
wound, which we supposed meant that he 
would surely die ; but he made no complaint 
of any kind, and while he retained conscious- 
ness persisted in dictating the story of the 
fight. A very touching incident happened in 
the improvised open-air hospital after the fight, 
where the wounded were lying. They did not 
groan, and made no complaint, trying to help 
one another. One of them suddenly began to 
hum, " My Country 'tis of Thee," and one by 
one the others joined in the chorus, which 
swelled out through the tropic woods, where 
the victors lay in camp beside their dead. I 
did not see any sign among the fighting men, 
whether wounded or unwounded, of the very 
comphcated emotions assigned to their kind 



GENERAL YOUNGS FIGHT, 119 

by some of the realistic modern novelists who 
have written about battles. At the front 
everyone behaved quite simply and took things 
as they came, in a matter-of-course way ; but 
there was doubtless, as is always the case, a 
good deal of panic and confusion in the rear 
where the wounded, the stragglers, a few of 
the packers, and two or three newspaper cor- 
respondents were, and in consequence the first 
reports sent back to the coast were of a most 
alarming character, describing, with minute 
inaccuracy, how we had run into an ambush, 
etc. The packers with the mules which car- 
ried the rapid-fire guns were among those who 
ran, and they let the mules go in the jungle ; in 
consequence the guns were never even brought 
to the firing-line, and only Fred Herrig's skill 
as a trailer enabled us to recover them. By 
patient work he followed up the mules' tracks 
in the forest until he found the animals. 

Among the wounded who walked to the 
temporary hospital at Siboney was the trooper, 
Rowland, of whom I spoke before. There 
the doctors examined him, and decreed that 
his wound was so serious that he must go 
back to the States. This was enough for 
Rowland, who waited until nightfall and then 
escaped, slipping out of the window and mak- 
ing his way back to camp with his rifle and 



1 2 o THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

pack, though his wound must have made all 
movement very painful to him. After this, 
we felt that he was entitled to stay, and he 
never left us for a day, distinguishing himself 
again in the fight at San Juan. 

Next morning we buried seven dead Rough 
Riders in a grave on the summit of the trail. 
Chaplain Brown reading the solemn burial 
service of the Episcopalians, while the men 
stood around with bared heads and joined in 
singing, " Rock of Ages." Vast numbers of 
vultures were wheeling round and round in 
great circles through the blue sky overhead. 
There could be no more honorable burial 
than that of these men in a common grave — 
Indian and cow-boy, miner, packer, and 
college athlete — the man of unknown ancestry 
from the lonely Western plains, and the man 
who carried on his watch the crest of the 
Stuyvesants and the Fishes, one in the way 
they had met death, just as during life they 
had been one in their daring and their 
loyalty. 

On the afternoon of the 25th we moved on 
a couple of miles, and camped in a marshy 
open spot close to a beautiful stream. Here 
we lay for several days. Captain Lee, the 
British attache, spent some time with us ; we 
had begun to regard him as almost a member 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 121 

of the regiment. Count von Gotzen, the 
German attache', another good fellow, also 
visited us. General Young was struck down 
with the fever, and Wood took charge of the 
brigade. This left me in command of the 
regiment, of which I was very glad, for such ex- 
perience as we had had is a quick teacher. By 
this time the men and I knew one another, and 
I felt able to make them do themselves justice 
in march or battle. They understood that I 
paid no heed to where they came from ; no 
heed to their creed, politics, or social stand- 
ing ; that I would care for them to the ut- 
most of my power, but that I demanded the 
highest performance of duty ; while in return 
I had seen them tested, and knew I could de- 
pend absolutely on their courage, hardihood, 
obedience, and individual initiative. 

There was nothing like enough transporta- 
tion with the army, whether in the way of 
wagons or mule-trains ; exactly as there had 
been no sufficient number of landing-boats 
with the transports. The officers' baggage 
had come up, but none of us had much, and 
the shelter-tents proved only a partial protec- 
tion against the terrific downpours of rain. 
These occurred almost every afternoon, and 
turned the camp into a tarn, and the trails 
into torrents and quagmires. We were not 



1 2 2 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

given quite the proper amount of food, and 
what we did get, like most of the clothing is- 
sued us, was fitter for the Klondyke than for 
Cuba. We got enough salt pork and hard- 
tack for the men, but not the full ration of 
coffee and sugar, and nothing else. I organ- 
ized a couple of expeditions back to the sea- 
coast, taking the strongest and best walkers 
and also some of the officers' horses and a 
stray mule or two, and brought back beans 
and canned tomatoes. These I got partly by 
great exertions on my part, and partly by the 
aid of Colonel Weston of the Commissary 
Department, a particularly energetic man 
whose services were of great value. A silly 
regulation forbade my purchasing canned 
vegetables, etc., except for the officers ; and 
I had no little difficulty in getting round this 
regulation, and purchasing (with my own 
money, of course) what I needed for the men. 
One of the men I took with me on one of 
these trips was Sherman Bell, the former 
Deputy Marshal of Cripple Creek, and Wells- 
Fargo Express rider. In coming home with 
his load, through a blinding storm, he slipped 
and opened the old rupture. The agony was 
very great and one of his comrades took his 
load. He himself, sometimes walking, and 
sometimes crawling, got back to camp, where 



GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT. 123 

Dr. Church fixed him up with a spike band- 
age, but informed him that he would have to 
be sent back to the States when an ambulance 
came along. The ambulance did not come 
until the next day, which was the day before 
we marched to San Juan. It arrived after 
nightfall, and as soon as Bell heard it coming, 
he crawled out of the hospital tent into the 
jungle, where he lay all night ; and the am- 
bulance went off without him. The men 
shielded him just as school-boys would shield 
a companion, carrying his gun, belt, and bed- 
ding ; while Bell kept out of sight until the 
column started, and then staggered along be- 
hind it. I found him the morning of the San 
Juan fight. He told me that he wanted to 
die fighting, if die he must, and I hadn't the 
heart to send him back. He did splendid 
service that day, and afterward in the trenches, 
and though the rupture opened twice again, 
and on each occasion he was within a hair's 
breadth of death, he escaped, and came back 
with us to the United States. 

The army was camped along the valley, 
ahead of and behind us, our outposts being 
established on either side. P'rom the generals 
to the privates all were eager to march against 
Santiago. At daybreak, when the tall palms 
began to show dimly through the rising mist, 



1 2 4 THE R O UGH RIDERS, 

the scream of the cavalry trumpets tore the 
tropic dawn ; and in the evening, as the bands 
of regiment after regiment played the " Star- 
Spangled Banner," all, officers and men alike, 
stood with heads uncovered, wherever they 
were, until the last strains of the anthem died 
away in the hot sunset air. 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIA GO. 125 



IV. 

THE CAVALRY AT SANTIAGO. 

/^ N June 30th we received orders to hold 
ourselves in readiness to march against 
Santiago, and all the men were greatly over- 
joyed, for the inaction was trying. The one 
narrow road, a mere muddy track along which 
the army was encamped, was choked with the 
marching columns. As always happened when 
we had to change camp, everything that the 
men could not carry, including, of course, the 
officers' baggage, was left behind. 

About noon the Rough Riders struck camp 
and drew up in column beside the road in the 
rear of the First Cavalry. Then we sat down 
and waited for hours before the order came to 
march, while regiment after regiment passed 
by, varied by bands of tatterdemalion Cuban 
insurgents, and by mule-trains with ammuni- 
tion. Every man carried three days' pro- 
visions. We had succeeded in borrowing 
mules sufficient to carry along the dynamite 
gun and the automatic Colts. 

At last, toward mid-afternoon, the First and 



126 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Tenth Cavalry, ahead of us, marched, and we 
followed. The First was under the command 
of Lieutenant-Colonel Veile, the Tenth under 
Lieutenant-Colonel Baldwin. Every few 
minutes there would be a stoppage in front, 
and at the halt I would make the men sit or 
lie down beside the track, loosening their 
packs. The heat was intense as we passed 
through the still, close jungle, wdiich formed a 
wall on either hand. Occasionally we came to 
gaps or open spaces, where some regiment was 
camped, and now and then one of these regi- 
ments, which apparently had been left out of . 
its proper place, would file into the road, 
breaking up our line of march. As a result, 
we finally found ourselves following merely 
the tail of the regiment ahead of us, an infantry 
regiment being thrust into the interval. Once 
or twice we had to wade streams. Darkness 
came on, but we still continued to march. It 
was about eight o'clock when we turned to the 
left and climbed El Poso hill, on whose sum- 
mit there was a ruined ranch and sugar 
factory, now, of course, deserted. Here I 
found General Wood, wdio was arranging for 
the camping of the brigade. Our own arrange- 
ments for the night were simple. I extended 
each troop across the road into the jungle, and 
then the men threw down their belongings 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIA GO. 127 

where they stood and slept on their arms. For- 
tunately, there was no rain. Wood and I curled 
up under our rain-coats on the saddle-blankets, 
while his two aides, Captain A. L. Mills and 
Lieutenant W. N. Ship, slept near us. We 
were up before dawn and getting breakfast. 
Mills and Ship had nothing to eat, and they 
breakfasted with Wood and myself, as we had 
been able to get some handf uls of beans, and 
some coffee and sugar, as well as the ordinary 
bacon and hardtack. 

We did not talk much, for though we were 
in ignorance as to precisely what the day 
would bring forth, we knew that we should see 
fighting. We had slept soundly enough, al- 
though, of course, both Wood and I during the 
night had made a round of the sentries, he of 
the brigade, and I of the regiment ; and I sup- 
pose that, excepting among hardened veterans, 
there is always a certain feeling of uneasy ex- 
citement the night before the battle. 

Mills and Ship were both tall, fine-looking 
men, of tried courage, and thoroughly trained 
in every detail of their profession ; I remem- 
ber being struck by the quiet, soldierly way 
they were going about their work early that 
morning. Before noon one was killed and the 
other dangerously wounded. 

General Wheeler was sick, but with his usual 



12 8 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

indomitable pluck and entire indifference to 
his own personal comfort, he kept to the front. 
He was unable to retain command of the cav- 
alry division, which accordingly devolved upon 
General Samuel Sumner, who commanded it 
until mid-afternoon, when the bulk of the fight- 
ing was over. General Sumner's own brigade 
fell to Colonel Henry Carroll. General Sum- 
ner led the advance with the cavalry, and the 
battle was fought by him and by General Kent, 
who commanded the infantry division, and 
whose foremost brigade was led by General 
Hawkins. 

As the sun rose the men fell in, and at the 
same time a battery of field guns was brought 
up on the hill-crest just beyond, between us 
and toward Santiago. It was a fine sight to 
see the great horses straining under the lash 
as they whirled the guns up the hill and into 
position. 

Our brigade was drawn up on the hither 
side of a kind of half basin, a big band of 
Cubans being off to the left. As yet we had 
received no orders, except that we were told 
that the main fighting was to be done by 
Lawton's infantry division, which was to take 
El Caney, several miles to our right, w'hile we 
were simply to make a diversion. This diver- 
sion was to be made mainly with the artillery, 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIAGO. 129 

and the battery which had taken position 
immediately in front of us was to begin when 
Lawton began. 

It was about six o'clock that the first re- 
port of the cannon from El Caney came boom- 
ing to us across the miles of still jungle. It 
was a very lovely morning, the sky of cloudless 
blue, while the level, shimmering rays from 
the just-risen sun brought into fine relief the 
splendid palms which here and there towered 
above the lower growth. The lofty and 
beautiful mountains hemmed in the Santiago 
plain, making it an amphitheatre for the 
battle. 

Immediately our guns opened, and at the 
report great clouds of white smoke hung on 
the ridge crest. For a minute or two there 
was no response. Wood and I were sitting 
together, and Wood remarked to me that he 
wished our brigade could be moved some- 
where else, for we were directly in line of any 
return fire aimed by the Spaniards at the 
battery. Hardly had he spoken when there 
was a peculiar whistling, singing sound in the 
air, and immediately afterward the noise of 
something exploding over our heads. It was 
shrapnel from the Spanish batteries. We 
sprung to our feet and leaped on our horses. 
Immediately afterward a second shot came 
9 



130 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



which burst directly above us ; and then a 
third. From the second shell one of the 
shrapnel bullets dropped on my wrist, hardly 
breaking the skin, but raising a bump about 
as big as a hickory-nut. The same shell 
wounded four of my regiment, one of them 
being Mason Mitchell, and two or three of 
the regulars were also hit, one losing his leg 
by a great fragment of shell. Another shell 
exploded right in the middle of the Cubans, 
killing and wounding a good many, while the 
remainder scattered like guinea-hens. Wood's 
led horse was also shot through the lungs. I 
at once hustled my regiment over the crest of 
the hill into the thick underbrush, where I 
had no little difficulty in getting them to- 
gether again into column. 

Meanwhile the firing continued for fifteen 
or twenty minutes, until it gradually died 
away. As the Spaniards used smokeless 
powder, their artillery had an enormous ad- 
vantage over ours, and, moreover, we did not 
have the best type of modern guns, our fire 
being slow. 

As soon as the firing ceased. Wood formed 
his brigade, with my regiment in front, and 
gave me orders to follow behind the First 
Brigade, which was just moving off the ground. 
In column of fours we marched down the trail 



I 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIAGO. 131 

toward the ford of the San Juan River. We 
passed two or three regiments of infantry, and 
were several times halted before we came to 
the ford. The First Brigade, which was under 
Colonel Carroll — Lieutenant-Colonel Hamil- 
ton commanding the Ninth Regiment, Major 
Wessels the Third, and Captain Kerr the 
Sixth — had already crossed and was march- 
ing to the right, parallel to, but a little dis- 
tance from, the river. The Spaniards in the 
trenches and block-houses on top of the hills 
in front were already firing at the brigade in 
desultory fashion. The extreme advance of 
the Ninth Cavalry was under Lieutenants 
McNamee and Hartwick. They were joined 
by General Hawkins, with his staff, who was 
looking over the ground and deciding on the 
route he should take his infantry brigade. 

Our orders had been of the vaguest kind, 
being simply to march to the right and con- 
nect with Lawton — with whom, of course, 
there was no chance of our connecting. No 
reconnoissance had been made, and the exact 
position and strength of the Spaniards was 
not known. A captive balloon was up in the 
air at this moment, but it was worse than use- 
less. A previous proper reconnoissance and 
proper look-out from the hills would have 
given us exact information. As it was. Gen- 



132 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



erals Kent, Sumner, and Hawkins had to be 
their own reconnoissance, and they fought 
their troops so well that we won anyhow. 

I was now ordered to cross the ford, march 
half a mile or so to the right, and then halt 
and await further orders ; and I promptly 
hurried my men across, for the fire was get- 
ting hot, and the captive balloon, to the hor- 
ror of everybody, was coming down to the 
ford. Of course, if was a special target for 
the enemy's fire. I got my men across be- 
fore it reached the ford. There it partly col- 
lapsed and remained, causing severe loss of 
life, as it indicated the exact position where 
the Tenth and the First Cavalry, and the in- 
fantry, were crossing. 

As I led my column slowly along, under 
the intense heat, through the high grass of 
the open jungle, the First Brigade was to our 
left, and the firing between it and the Span- 
iards on the hills grew steadily hotter and 
hotter. After awhile I came to a sunken 
lane, and as by this time the First Brigade 
had stopped and was engaged in a stand-up 
fight, I halted my men and sent back word 
for orders. As we faced toward the Spanish 
hills my regiment w^as on the right with next 
to it and a little in advance the First Cavalry, 
and behind them the Tenth. In our front 



p 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO. i ^ 

the Ninth held the right, the Sixth the centre, 
and the Third the left ; but in the jungle the 
lines were already overlapping in places. 
Kent's infantry were coming up, farther to 
the left. 

Captain Mills was with me. The sunken 
lane, which had a wire fence on either side, 
led straight up toward, and between, the two 
hills in our front, the hill on the left, which 
contained heavy blockhouses, being farther 
away from us than the hill on our right, which 
we afterward grew to call Kettle Hill, and 
which was surmounted merely by some large 
ranch buildings or haciendas, with sunken 
brick-lined walls and cellars. I got the men 
as well-sheltered as I could. Many of them 
lay close under the bank of the lane, others 
slipped into the San Juan River and crouched 
under its hither bank, while the rest lay down 
behind the patches of bushy jungle in the 
tall grass. The heat was intense, and many 
of the men were already showing signs of ex- 
haustion. The sides of the hills in front were 
bare ; but the country up to them was, for 
the most part, covered with such dense jungle 
that in charging through it no accuracy of 
formation could possibly be preserved. 

The fight was now on in good earnest, and 
the Spaniards on the hills were engaged in 



134 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

heavy volley firing. The Mauser bullets 
drove in sheets through the trees and the tall 
jungle grass, making a peculiar whirring or 
rustling sound ; some of the bullets seemed to 
pop in the air, so that we thought they were ex- 
plosive ; and, indeed, many of those which were 
coated with brass did explode, in the sense 
that the brass coat was ripped off, making a 
think plate of hard metal with a jagged edge, 
which inflicted a ghastly wound. These 
bullets were shot from a 45-calibre rifle carry- 
ing smokeless powder, which was much used 
by the guerillas and irregular Spanish troops. 
The Mauser bullets themselves made a small 
clean hole, with the result that the wound 
healed in a most astonishing manner. One or 
two of our men who were shot in the head had 
the skull blown open, but elsewhere the wounds 
from the minute steel-coated bullet, with its very 
high velocity, were certainly nothing like as 
serious as those made by the old large-calibre, 
low-power rifle. If a man was shot through 
the heart, spine, or brain he was, of course, 
killed instantly ; but very few of the \vounded 
died — even under the appalling conditions 
which prevailed, owing to the lack of attend- 
ance and supplies in the field-hospitals with 
the army. 

While we were lying in reserve we were 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIA GO, 135 

suffering nearly as much as afterward when 
we charged. I think that the bulk of the 
Spanish fire was practically unaimed, or at 
least not aimed at any particular man, and 
only occasionally at a particular body of men ; 
but they swept the whole field of battle up to 
the edge of the river, and man after man in 
our ranks fell dead or wounded, although I 
had the troopers scattered out far apart, taking 
advantage of every scrap of cover. 

Devereux was dangerously shot while he lay 
with his men on the edge of the river. A young 
West Point cadet, Ernest Haskell, who had 
taken his holiday with us as an acting second 
lieutenant, was shot through the stomach. 
He had shown great coolness and gallantry, 
which he displayed to an even more marked 
degree after being wounded, shaking my hand 
and saying, " All right. Colonel, I'm going to 
get well. Don't bother about me, and don't 
let any man come away with me." When I 
shook hands with him, I thought he would 
surely die ; yet he recovered. 

The most serious loss that I and the regi- 
ment could have suffered befell just before 
we charged. Bucky O'Neill was strolling up 
and down in front of his men, smoking his 
cigarette, for he was inveterately addicted to 
the habit. He had a theory that an officer 



136 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

ought never to take cover — a theory which 
was, of course, wrong, though in a vohinteer 
organization the officers should certainly ex- 
pose themselves very fully, simply for the ef- 
fect on the men ; our regimental toast on the 
transport running, " The officers ; may the 
war last until each is killed, wounded, or pro- 
moted." As O'Neill moved to and fro, his 
men begged him to lie down, and one of the 
sergeants said, " Captain, a bullet is sure to 
hit you." O'Neill took his cigarette out of 
his mouth, and blowing out a cloud of smoke 
laughed and said, " Sergeant, the Spanish 
bullet isn't made that will kill me." A little 
later he discussed for a moment with one of 
the regular officers the direction from which 
the Spanish fire was coming. As he turned 
on his heel a bullet struck him in the mouth 
and came out at the back of his head ; so that 
even before he fell his wild and gallant soul 
had gone out into the darkness. 

My orderly was a brave young Harvard 
boy, Sanders, from the quaint old Massachu- 
setts town of Salem. The work of an orderly 
on foot, under the blazing sun, through the 
hot and matted jungle, was very severe, and 
finally the heat overcame him. He dropped ; 
nor did he ever recover fully, and later he died 
from fever. In his place I summoned a 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIA GO. 137 

trooper whose name I did not know. Shortly 
afterward, while sitting beside the bank, I 
directed him to go back and ask whatever 
general he came across if I could not advance, 
as my men were being much cut up. He 
stood up to salute and then pitched forward 
across my knees, a bullet having gone through 
his throat, cutting the carotid. 

When O'Neill was shot, his troop, who were 
devoted to him, were for the moment at a loss 
whom to follow. One of their number, Henry 
Bardshar, a huge Arizona miner, immediately 
attached himself to me as my orderly, and 
from that moment he was closer to me, not 
only in the fight, but throughout the rest of 
the campaign, than any other man, not even 
excepting the color-sergeant, Wright. 

Captain Mills was with me ; gallant Ship 
had already been killed. Mills was an inval- 
uable aide, absolutely cool, absolutely un- 
moved or flurried in any way. 

I sent messenger after messenger to try to 
find General Sumner or General Wood and 
get permission to advance, and was just about 
making up my mind that in the absence of 
orders I had better " march toward the guns," 
when Lieutenant-Colonel Dorst came riding 
up through the storm of bullets with the wel- 
come command " to move forward and support 



1 3 8 THE R O UGH RIDERS, 

the regulars in the assault on the hills in 
front." General Sumner had obtained author- 
ity to advance from Lieutenant Miley, who 
was representing General Shafter at the front, 
and was in the thick of the fire. The General 
at once ordered the first brigade to advance 
on the hills, and the second to support it. 
He himself was riding his horse along the 
lines, superintending the fight. Later I over- 
heard a couple of my men talking together 
about him. What they said illustrates the 
value of a display of courage among the offi- 
cers in hardening their soldiers ; for their 
theme was how, as they were lying down under 
a fire which they could not return, and were in 
consequence feeling rather nervous, General 
Sumner suddenly appeared on horseback, 
sauntering by quite unmoved ; and, said one 
of the men, " That made us feel all right. If 
the General could stand it, we could." 

The instant I received the order I sprang 
on my horse and then my " crowded hour " 
began. The guerillas had been shooting at 
us from the edges of the jungle and from their 
perches in the leafy trees, and as they used 
smokeless powder, it was almost impossible to 
see them, though a few of my men had from 
time to time responded. We had also suf- 
fered from the hill on our right front, which 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO, 139 

was held chiefly by guerillas, although there 
were also some Spanish regulars with them, for 
we found their dead. I formed my men in 
column of troops, each troop extended in 
open skirmishing order, the right resting on 
the wire fences which bordered the sunken 
lane. Captain Jenkins led the first squadron, 
his eyes literally dancing with joyous excite- 
ment. 

I started in the rear of the regiment, the 
position in which the colonel should theoreti- 
cally stay. Captain Mills and Captain Mc- 
Cormick were both with me as aides ; but I 
speedily had to send them off on special duty 
in getting the different bodies of men forward. 
I had intended to go into action on foot as at 
Las Guasimas, but the heat was so oppressive 
that I found I should be quite unable to run 
up and down the line and superintend mat- 
ters unless I was mounted; and, moreover, 
when on horseback, I could see the men better 
and they could see me better. 

A curious incident happened as I was getting 
the men started forward. Always when men 
have been lying down under cover for some 
time, and are required to advance, there is a 
little hesitation, each looking to see whether 
the others are going forward. As I rode down 
the line, calling to the troopers to go forward, 



I40 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

and rasping brief directions to the captains 
and lieutenants, I came upon a man lying be- 
hind a little bush, and I ordered him to jump 
up. I do not think he understood that we 
were making a forward move, and he looked 
up at me for a moment with hesitation, and I 
again bade him rise, jeering him and saying : 
*' Are you afraid to stand up when I am on 
horseback ? " As I spoke, he suddenly fell 
forward on his face, a bullet having struck 
him and gone through him lengthwise. I 
suppose the bullet had been aimed at me ; 
at any rate, I, who was on horseback in the 
open, was unhurt, and the man lying flat on 
the ground in the cover beside me was killed. 
There w^ere several pairs of brothers with us ; 
of the two Nortons one was killed ; of the two 
McCurdys one was wounded. 

I soon found that I could get that line, be- 
hind which I personally was, faster forward 
than the one immediately in front of it, with 
the result that the two rearmost lines of the 
regiment began to crowd together ; so I rode 
through them both, the better to move on the 
one in front. This happened with every line 
in succession, until I found myself at the head 
of the regiment. 

Both lieutenants of B Troop from Arizona 
had been exerting themselves greatly, and 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO. 141 

both were overcome by the heat ; but Ser- 
geants Campbell and Davidson took it forward 
in splendid shape. Some of the men from 
this troop and from the other Arizona troop 
(Bucky O'Neill's) joined me as a kind of fight- 
ing tail. 

The Ninth Regiment was immediately in 
front of me, and the First on my left, and 
these went up Kettle Hill with my regiment. 
The Third, Sixth, and Tenth went partly up 
Kettle Hill (following the Rough Riders and 
the Ninth and First), and partly between that 
and the block-house hill, which the infantry 
were assailing. General Sumner in person 
gave the Tenth the order to charge the hills ; 
and it went forward at a rapid gait. The 
three regiments went forward more or less 
intermingled, advancing steadily and keeping 
up a heavy fire. Up Kettle Hill Sergeant 
George Berry, of the Tenth, bore not only his 
own regimental colors but those of the Third, 
the color sergeant of the Third having been 
shot down ; he kept shouting '' Dress on the 
colors, boys, dress on the colors ! " as he fol- 
lowed Captain Ayres, who was running in ad- 
vance of his men, shouting and waving his 
hat. The Tenth Cavalry lost a greater pro- 
portion of its officers than any other regiment 
in the battle — eleven out of twenty-two. 



142 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

By the time I had come to the head of the 
regiment we ran into the left wing of the Ninth 
Regulars, and some of the First Regulars, who 
were lying down ; that is, the troopers were 
lying down, while the officers were walking to 
and fro. The officers of the white and colored 
regiments alike took the greatest pride in see- 
ing that the men more than did their duty ; 
and the mortality among them was great. 

I spoke to the captain in command of the 
rear platoons, saying that I had been ordered 
to support the regulars in the attack upon the 
hills, and that in my judgment we could not 
take these hills by firing at them, and that we 
must rush them. He answered that his orders 
were to keep his men lying where they were, 
and that he could not charge without orders. 
I asked where the Colonel was, and as he was 
not in sight, said, " Then I am the ranking 
officer here and I give the order to charge " 
— for I did not want to keep the men longer 
in the open suffering under a fire which they 
(^ould not effectively return. Naturally the 
Captain hesitated to obey this order when no 
word had been received from his own Colonel. 
So I said, '' Then let my men through, sir," 
and rode on through the lines, followed by the 
grinning Rough Riders, whose attention had 
been completely taken off the Spanish bullets, 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIAGO. 1 43 

partly by my dialogue with the regulars, and 
partly by the language I had been using to 
themselves as I got the lines forward, for I 
had been joking with some and swearing at 
others, as the exigencies of the case seemed 
to demand. When we started to go through, 
however, it proved too much for the regulars, 
and they jumped up and and came along, 
their officers and troops mingling with mine, 
all being delighted at the chance. When I 
got to where the head of the left wing of the 
Ninth was lying, through the courtesy of Lieu- 
tenant Hartwick, two of whose colored troopers 
threw down the fence, I was enabled to get 
back into the lane, at the same time waving 
my hat, and giving the order to charge the 
hill on our right front. Out of my sight, over 
on the right, Captains McBlain and Taylor, of 
the Ninth, made up their minds independently 
to charge at just about this time ; and at al- 
most the same moment Colonels Carroll and 
Hamilton, who were off, I believe, to my left, 
where we could see neither them nor their 
men, gave the order to advance. But of all 
this I knew nothing at the time. The whole 
line, tired of waiting, and eager to close with 
the enemy, was straining to go forward ; and 
it seems that different parts slipped the leash 
at almost the same moment. The First 



144 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Cavalry came up the hill just behind, and 
partly mixed with my regiment and the Ninth. 
As already said, portions of the Third, Sixth, 
and Tenth followed, while the rest of the 
members of these three regiments kept more 
in touch with the infantry on our left. 

By this time we were all in the spirit of the 
thing and greatly excited by the charge, the 
men cheering and running forward between 
shots, while the delighted faces of the foremost 
officers, like Captain C. J. Stevens, of the 
Ninth, as they ran at the head of their troops, 
will always stay in my mind. As soon as I was 
in the line I galloped forward a few yards 
until I saw that the men w^ere well started, 
and then galloped back to help Goodrich, v/ho 
was in command of his troop, get his men 
across the road so as to attack the hill from 
that side. Captain Mills had already thrown 
three of the other troops of the regiment across 
this road for the same purpose. Wheeling 
around, I then again galloped toward the hill 
passing the shouting, cheering, firing men, and 
went up the lane, splashing through a small 
stream ; when I got abreast of the ranch build- 
ings on the top of Kettle Hill, I turned and 
went up the slope. Being on horseback I was, 
of course, able to get ahead of the men on 
foot, excepting my orderly, Henry Bardshar, 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO. 1 45 

who had run ahead very fast in order to get 
better shots at the Spaniards, who were now 
running out of the ranch buildings. Sergeant 
Campbell and a number of the Arizona men, 
and Dudley Dean, among others, were very 
close behind. Stevens, with his platoon of the 
Ninth, was abreast of us ; so were McNamee 
and Hartwick. Some forty yards from the 
top I ran into a wire fence and jumped off 
Little Texas, turning him loose. He had 
been scraped by a couple of bullets, one of 
which nicked my elbow, and I never expected 
to see him again. As I ran up to the hill, 
Bardshar stopped to shoot, and two Spaniards 
fell as he emptied his magazine. These were 
the only Spaniards I a tually saw fall to aimed 
shots by any one of my men, with the ex- 
ception of two guerillas in trees. 

Almost immediately afterwards the hill was 
covered by the troops, both Rough Riders and 
the colored troopers of the Ninth, and some 
men of the First. There was the usual con- 
fusion, and afterward there was much discus- 
sion as to exactly who had been on the hill 
first. The first guidons planted there were 
those of the three New Mexican troops, G, E, 
and F, of my regiment, under their Captains, 
Llewellen, Luna, and MuUer, but on the ex- 
treme right of the hill, at the opposite end 
10 



146 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

from where we struck it, Captains Taylor and 
McBlain and their men of the Ninth were first 
up. Each of the five captains was firm in 
the beUef that his troop was first up. As for 
the individual men, each of whom honestly 
thought he was first on the summit, their 
name was legion. One Spaniard was cap- 
tured in the buildings, another was shot as 
he tried to hide himself, and a few others 
were killed as they ran. 

Among the many deeds of conspicuous 
gallantry here performed, two, both to the 
credit of the First Cavalry, may be mentioned 
as examples of the others, not as exceptions. 
Sergeant Charles Karsten, while close beside 
Captain Tutherly, the squadron commander, 
was hit by a shrapnel bullet. He continued 
on the line, firing until his arm grew numb ; 
and he then refused to go to the rear, and 
devoted himself to taking care of the wounded, 
utterly unmoved by the heavy fire. Trooper 
Hugo Brittain, when wounded, brought the 
regimental standard forward, waving it to and 
fro, to cheer the men. 

No sooner were we on the crest than the 
Spaniards from the line of hills in our front, 
where they were strongly intrenched, opened 
a very heavy fire upon us with their rifles. 
They also opened upon us with one or two 



\ 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIAGO. 147 

pieces of artillery, using time fuses which 
burned very accurately, the shells exploding 
right over our heads. 

On the top of the hill was a huge iron 
kettle, or something of the kind, probably 
used for sugar refining. Several of our men 
took shelter behind this. We had a splendid 
view of the charge on the San Juan block- 
house to our left, where the infantry of Kent, 
led by Hawkins, were climbing the hill. Ob- 
viously the proper thing to do was to help them, 
and I got the men together and started them 
volley-firing against the Spaniards in the San 
Juan block-house and in the trenches around 
it. We could only see their heads ; of course 
this was all we ever could see when we were 
firing at them in their trenches. Stevens was 
directing not only his own colored troopers, 
but a number of Rough Riders ; for in a 
melee good soldiers are always prompt to rec- 
ognize a good ofiicer, and are eager to follow 
him. 

We kept up a brisk fire for some five or 
ten minutes ; meanwhile we were much cut 
up ourselves. Gallant Colonel Hamilton, 
than whom there was never a braver man, 
was killed, and equally gallant Colonel Carroll 
wounded. When near the summit Captain 
Mills had been shot through the head, the 



148 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

bullet destroying the sight of one eye per- 
manently and of the other temporarily. He 
would not go back or let any man assist him, 
sitting down where he was and waiting until 
one of the men brought him word that the hill 
was stormed. Colonel Veile planted the 
standard of the First Cavalry on the hill, and 
General Sumner rode up. He was fighting 
his division in great form, and was always 
himself in the thick of the fire. As the men 
were much excited by the firing, they seemed 
to pay very little heed to their own losses. 

Suddenly, above the cracking of the carbines, 
rose a peculiar drumming sound, and some of 
the men cried, " The Spanish machine-guns ! " 
Listening, I made out that it came from the 
flat ground to the left, and jumped to my feet, 
smiting my hand on my thigh, and shouting 
aloud with exultation, " It's the Catlings, men, 
our Catlings ! " Lieutenant Parker was bring- 
ing his four Catlings into action, and shoving 
them nearer and nearer the front. Now and 
then the drumming ceased for a moment; 
then it would resound again, always closer to 
San Juan hill, which Parker, like ourselves, 
was hammering to assist the infantry attack. 
Our men cheered lustily. We saw much of 
Parker after that, and there was never a more 
welcome sound than his Catlings as they 



THE CA VALR Y AT SAN TIA GO. 1 49 

opened. It was the only sound which I ever 
heard my men cheer in battle. 

The infantry got nearer and nearer the 
crest of the hill. At last we could see the 
Spaniards running from the rifle-pits as the 
Americans came on in their final rush. Then 
I stopped my men for fear they should injure 
their comrades, and called to them to charge 
the next line of trenches, on the hills in our 
front, from which we had been undergoing a 
good deal of punishment. Thinking that the 
men would all come, I jumped over the wire 
fence in front of us and started at the double ; 
but, as a matter of fact, the troopers were so 
excited, what with shooting and being shot, 
and shouting and cheering, that they did not 
hear, or did not heed me ; and after running 
about a hundred yards I found I had only 
five men along with me. Bullets were ripping 
the grass all around us, and one of the men, 
Clay Green, was mortally wounded ; another, 
Winslow Clark, a Harvard man, was shot 
first in the leg and then through the body. 
He made not the slightest murmur, only ask- 
ing me to put his water canteen where he 
could get at it, which I did ; he ultimately 
recovered. There was no use going on with 
the remaining three men, and I bade them 
stay where they were while I went back and 



150 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

brought up the rest of the brigade. This was 
a decidedly cool request, for there was really 
no possible point in letting them stay there 
while I went back ; but at the moment it 
seemed perfectly natural to me, and apparently 
so to them, for they cheerfully nodded, and 
sat down in the grass, firing back at the line 
of trenches from which the Spaniards were 
shooting at them. Meanwhile, I ran back, 
jumped over the wire fence, and went over the 
crest of the hill, filled with anger against the 
troopers, and especially those of my own regi- 
ment, for not having accompanied me. They, 
of course, were quite innocent of wrong-doing ; 
and even while I taunted them bitterly for not 
having followed me, it was all I could do not 
to smile at the look of injury and surprise 
that came over their faces, while they cried 
out, " We didn't hear you, we didn't see you 
go. Colonel ; lead on now, we'll sure follow 
you." I wanted the other regiments to come 
too, so I ran down to where General Sumner 
was and asked him if I might make the charge ; 
and he told me to go and that he would see 
that the men followed. By this time every- 
body had his attention attracted, and when I 
leaped over the fence again, with Major Jen- 
kins beside me, the men of the various regi- 
ments which were already on the hill came 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO. 151 

with a rush, and we started across the wide 
valley which lay between us and the Spanish 
intrenchments. Captain Dimmick, now in 
command of the Ninth, was bringing it for- 
ward ; Captain McBlain had a number of 
Rough Riders mixed in with his troop, and 
led them all together ; Captain Taylor had 
been severely wounded. The long-legged men 
like Greenway, Goodrich, sharp-shooter Proffit, 
and others, outstripped the rest of us, as we 
had a considerable distance to go. Long be- 
fore we got near them the Spaniards ran, save 
a few here and there, who either surrendered 
or were shot down. When we reached the 
trenches we found them filled with dead bodies 
in the light blue and white uniform of the 
Spanish regular army. There were very few 
wounded. Most of the fallen had little holes 
in their heads from which their brains were 
oozing ; for they were covered from the neck 
down by the trenches. 

It w^as at this place that Major Wessels, of 
the Third Cavalry, was shot in the back of 
the head. It was a severe wound, but after 
having it bound up he again came to the front 
in command of his regiment. Among the 
men who were foremost was Lieutenant Milton 
F. Davis, of the First Cavalry. He had been 
joined by three men of the Seventy-first New 



152 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

York, who ran up, and, saluting, said, " Lieu- 
tenant, we want to go with you, our officers 
won't lead us." One of the brave fellows was 
soon afterward shot in the face. Lieutenant 
Davis's first sergeant, Clarence Gould, killed 
a Spanish soldier with his revolver, just as the 
Spaniard was aiming at one of my Rough 
Riders. At about the same time I also shot 
one. I was with Henry Bardshar, running up 
at the double, and two Spaniards leaped from 
the trenches and fired at us, not ten yards 
away. As they turned to run I closed in and 
fired twice, missing the first and killing the 
second. My revolver was from the sunken 
battle-ship Maine, and had been given me by 
my brother-in-law. Captain W. S. Cowles, of 
the Navy. At the time I did not know of 
Gould's exploit, and supposed my feat to be 
unique ; and although Gould had killed his 
Spaniard in the trenches, not very far from 
me, I never learned of it until weeks after. 
It is astonishing what a limited area of vision 
and experience one has in the hurly-burly of 
a battle. 

There was very great confusion at this time, 
the different regiments being completely inter- 
mingled — white regulars, colored regulars, and 
Rough Riders. General Sumner had kept a 
considerable force in reserve on Kettle Hill, 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO. 153 

under Major Jackson, of the Third Cavalry. 
We were still under a heavy fire and I got to- 
gether a mixed lot of men and pushed on from 
the trenches and ranch-houses which we had 
just taken, driving the Spaniards through a 
line of palm-trees, and over the crest of a chain 
of hills. When we reached these crests we 
found ourselves overlooking Santiago. Some 
of the men, including Jenkins, Greenway, and 
Goodrich, pushed on almost by themselves 
far ahead. Lieutenant Hugh Berkely, of the 
First, with a sergeant and two troopers, 
reached the extreme front. He was, at the 
time, ahead of everyone ; the sergeant was 
killed and one trooper wounded ; but the lieu- 
tenant and the remaining trooper stuck to 
their post for the rest of the afternoon until our 
line was gradually extended to include them. 

While I was re-forming the troops on the 
chain of hills, one of General Sumner's aides, 
Captain Robert Howze — as dashing and gal- 
lant an officer as there was in the whole gallant 
cavalry division, by the way — came up with 
orders to me to halt where I was, not advanc- 
ing farther, but to hold the hill at all hazards. 
Howze had his horse, and I had some diffi- 
culty in making him take proper shelter ; he 
stayed with us for quite a time, unable to make 
up his mind to leave the extreme front, and 



'54 



THE ROUGH RIDERS, 



meanwhile jumping at the chance to render 
any service, of risk or otherwise, which the 
moment developed. 

I now had mider me all the fragments of 
the six cavalry regiments which were at the 
extreme front, being the highest officer left 
there, and I was in immediate command of 
them for the remainder of the afternoon and 
that night. The Ninth was over to the right, 
and the Thirteenth Infantry afterward came 
up beside it. The rest of Kent's infantry was 
to our left. Of the Tenth, Lieutenants An- 
derson, MuUer, and Fleming reported to me ; 
Anderson was slightly wounded, but he paid 
no heed to this. All three, like every other 
officer, had troopers of various regiments un- 
der them ; such mixing was inevitable in mak- 
ing repeated charges through thick jungle ; it 
was essentially a troop commanders', indeed, 
almost a squad leaders', fight. The Spaniards 
who had been holding the trenches and the 
line of hills, had fallen back upon their sup- 
ports and we were under a very heavy fire 
both from rifles and great guns. At the point 
where we were, the grass-covered hill-crest 
was gently rounded, giving poor cover, and I 
made my men lie down on the hither slope. 

On the extreme left Captain Beck, of the 
Tenth, with his own troop, and small bodies 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO, 155 

of the men of other regiments, was exercising 
a practically independent command, driving 
back the Spaniards whenever they showed 
any symptoms of advancing. He had re- 
ceived his orders to hold the line at all hazards 
from Lieutenant Andrews, one of General 
Sumner's aides, just as I had received mine from 
Captain Howze. Finally, he w^as relieved by 
some infantry, and then rejoined the rest of 
the Tenth, which was engaged heavily until 
dark, Major Wint being among the severely 
wounded. Lieutenant W. N. Smith was 
killed. Captain Biglow had been wounded 
three times. 

Our artillery made one or two efforts to 
come into action on the firing-line of the in- 
fantry, but the black powder rendered each 
attempt fruitless. The Spanish guns used 
smokeless powder, so that it was difficult to 
place them. In this respect they were on a 
par with their own infantry and with our reg- 
ular infantry and dismounted cavalry; but 
our only two volunteer infantry regiments, the 
Second Massachusetts and the seventy-first 
New York, and our artillery, all had black 
powder. This rendered the two volunteer 
regiments, which were armed with the anti- 
quated Springfield, almost useless in the bat- 
tle, and did practically the same thing for the 



156 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

artillery wherever it was formed within rifle 
range. When one of the guns was discharged 
a thick cloud of smoke shot out and hung 
over the place, making an ideal target, and in 
a half minute every Spanish gun and rifle 
within range was directed at the particular 
spot thus indicated ; the consequence was 
that after a more or less lengthy stand the 
gun was silenced or driven off. We got no 
appreciable help from our guns on July ist. 
Our men were quick to realize the defects of 
our artillery, but they were entirely philosophic 
about it, not showing the least concern at its 
failure. On the contrary, whenever they 
heard our artillery open they would grin as 
they looked at one another and remark. 
" There go the guns again ; wonder how soon 
they'll be shut up," and shut up they were 
sure to be. The light battery of Hotchkiss 
one-pounders, under Lieutenant J. B. Hughes, 
of the Tenth Cavalry, was handled with con- 
spicuous gallantry. 

On the hill-slope immediately around me I 
had a mixed force composed of members of 
most of the cavalry regiments, and a few in- 
fantrymen. There were about fifty of my 
Rough Riders with Lieutenants Goodrich and 
Carr. Among the rest were perhaps a score 
of colored infantrymen, but, as it happened, 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIAGO. 1 5 7 

at this particular point without any of their 
officers. No troops could have behaved better 
than the colored soldiers had behaved so far ; 
but they are, of course, peculiarly dependent 
upon their white officers. Occasionally they 
produce non-commissioned officers who can 
take the initiative and accept responsibility 
precisely like the best class of whites; but 
this cannot be expected normally, nor is it 
fair to expect it. With the colored troops 
there should always be some of their own offi- 
cers; whereas, with the white regulars, as 
with my own Rough Riders, experience show- 
ed that the non-commissioned officers could 
usually carry on the fight by themselves if 
they were once started, no matter whether 
their officers were killed or not. 

At this particular time it was trying for the 
men, as they were lying flat on their faces, 
very rarely responding to the bullets, shells, 
and shrapnel which swept over the hill-top, 
and which occasionally killed or wounded one 
of their number. Major Albert G. Forse, of 
the First Cavalry, a noted Indian fighter, was 
killed about this time. One of my best men. 
Sergeant Greenly, of Arizona, who was lying 
beside me, suddenly said, " Beg pardon. Col- 
onel ; but I've been hit in the leg." I asked, 
" Badly ? " He said, " Yes, Colonel ; quite 



1 5 8 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

badly." After one of his comrades had 
helped him fix up his leg with a first-aid-to- 
the-injured bandage, he limped off to the rear. 
None of the white regulars or Rough Riders 
showed the slightest sign of weakening ; but 
under the strain the colored infantrymen (who 
had none of their officers) began to get a 
little uneasy and to drift to the rear, either 
helping wounded men, or saying that they 
wished to find their own regiments. This I 
could not allow, as it was depleting my line, 
so I jumped up, and walking a few yards to 
the rear, drew my revolver, halted the retreat- 
ing soldiers, and called out to them that I 
appreciated the gallantry wdth which they had 
fought and would be sorry to hurt them, but 
that I should shoot the first man who, on any 
pretence whatever, went to the rear. My own 
men had all sat up and w^ere watching my 
movements with the utmost interest ; so was 
Captain Howze. I ended my statement to 
the colored soldiers by saying : " Now, I shall 
be ver)'- sorry to hurt you, and you don't know 
whether or not I will keep my word, but my 
men can tell you that I always do ; " where- 
upon my cow'-punchers, hunters, and miners 
solemnly nodded their heads and commented 
in chorus, exactly as if in a comic opera, " He 
always does ; he always does 1 '* 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIAGO. 159 

This was the end of the trouble, for the 
" smoked Yankees " — as the Spaniards called 
the colored soldiers — flashed their white teeth 
at one another, as they broke into broad grins, 
and I had no more trouble with them, they 
seeming to accept me as one of their own 
officers. The colored cavalrymen had already 
so accepted me ; in return, the Rough Riders, 
although for the most part South-westerners, 
who have a strong color prejudice, grew to 
accept them with hearty good-will as com- 
rades, and were entirely willing, in their own 
phrase, " to drink out of the same canteen." 
Where all the regular officers did so well, it is 
hard to draw any distinction ; but in the 
cavalry division a peculiar meed of praise 
should be given to the oflicers of the Ninth 
and Tenth for their work, and under their 
leadership the colored troops did as well as 
any soldiers could possibly do. 

In the course of the afternoon the Span- 
iards in our front made the only offensive 
movement which I saw them make during the 
entire campaign ; for what were ordinarily 
called " attacks " upon our lines consisted 
merely of heavy firing from their trenches and 
from their skirmishers. In this case they did 
actually begin to make a forward movement, 
their cavalry coming up as well as the marines 



l6o THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

and reserve infantry,* while their skirmishers, 
who were always bold, redoubled their activity. 
It could not be called a charge, and not only was 
it not pushed home, but it was stopped almost 
as soon as it began, our men immediately run- 
ning forward to the crest of the hill with 
shouts of delight at seeing their enemies at 
last come into the open. A few seconds' 
firing stopped their advance and drove them 
into the cover of the trenches. 

They kept up a very heavy fire for some 
time longer, and our men again lay down, 
only replying occasionally. Suddenly we 
heard on our right the peculiar drumming 
sound which had been so welcome in the 
morning, when the infantry were assailing the 
San Juan block-house. The Catlings were 
up again ! I started over to inquire, and 
found that Lieutenant Parker, not content with 
using his guns in support of the attacking 
forces, had thrust them forward to the ex- 
treme front of the fighting line, where he was 
handling them with great effect. From this 
time on, throughout the fighting, Parker's 
Catlings were on the right of my regiment, 
and his men and mine fraternized in every 
way. He kept his pieces at the extreme front, 

* Lieutenant Tejeiro, p. 154, speaks of this attempt to 
retake San Juan and its failure. 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO, i6 1 

using them on every occasion until, the last 
Spanish shot was fired. Indeed, the dash and 
efficiency with which the Catlings were 
handled by Parker was one of the most strik- 
ing features of the campaign ; he showed 
that a first-rate officer could use machine-guns, 
on wheels, in battle and skirmish, in attack- 
ing and defending trenches, alongside of the 
best troops, and to their great advantage. 

As night came on, the firing gradually died 
away. Before this happened, however, Cap- 
tains Morton and Boughton, of the Third 
Cavalry, came over to tell me that a rumor 
had reached them to the effect that there had 
been some talk of retiring and that they 
wished to protest in the strongest manner. I 
had been watching them both, as they handled 
their troops with the cool confidence of the 
veteran regular officer, and had been con- 
gratulating myself that they were off toward 
the right flank, for as long as they were there, 
I knew I was perfectly safe in that direction. 
I had heard no rumor about retiring, and I 
cordially agreed with them that it would be 
far worse than a blunder to abandon our posi- 
tion. 

To attack the Spaniards by rushing across 

open ground, or through wire entanglements 

and low, almost impassable jungle, without 
II 



1 62 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

the help of artillery, and to force unbroken 
infantry, fighting behind earthworks and 
armed with the best repeating weapons, sup- 
ported by cannon, w^as one thing ; to repel 
such an attack ourselves, or to fight our foes 
on anything like even terms in the open, was 
quite another thing. No possible number of 
Spaniards coming at us from in front could 
have driven us from our position, and there 
was not a man on the crest who did not 
eagerly and devoutly hope that our opponents 
would make the attempt, for it would surely 
have been followed, not merely by a repulse, 
but by our immediately taking the city. 
There was not an officer or a man on the fir- 
ing-line, so far as I saw them, who did not 
feel this way. 

As night fell, some of my men went back to 
the buildings in our rear and foraged through 
them, for we had now been fourteen hours 
charging and fighting without food. They 
came across what was evidently the Spanish 
officers' mess, where their dinner was still 
cooking, and they brought it to the front in 
high glee. It was evident that the Spanish 
officers were living well, however the Spanish 
rank and file w^ere faring. There were three 
big iron pots, one filled with beef-stew, one 
with boiled rice, and one with boiled peas ; 



THE CAVALRY AT SANTIA GO. 1 63 

there was a big demijohn of ruin (all along 
the trenches which the Spaniards held were 
empty wine and liquor bottles) ; there were 
a number of loaves of rice-bread ; and there 
were even some small cans of preserves and 
a few salt fish. Of course, among so many- 
men, the food, which was equally divided, 
did not give very much to each, but it fresh- 
ened us all. 

Soon after dark. General Wheeler, who in 
the afternoon had resumed command of the 
cavalry division, came to the front. A very 
few words with General Wheeler reassured 
us about retiring. He had been through too 
much heavy fighting in the Civil War to regard 
the present fight as very serious, and he told 
us not to be under any apprehension, for he 
had sent word that there was no need what- 
ever of retiring, and was sure we would stay 
where we were until the chance came to ad- 
vance. He was second in command ; and 
to him more than to any other one man was 
due the prompt abandonment of the proposal 
to fall back — a proposal which, if adopted, 
would have meant shame and disaster. 

Shortly afterward General Wheeler sent us 
orders to entrench. The men of the different 
regiments were now getting in place again 
and sifting themselves out. All of our troops 



1 6 4 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

who had been kept at Kettle Hill came for- 
ward and rejoined us after nightfall. During 
the afternoon Greenway, apparently not hav- 
ing enough to do in the fighting, had taken 
advantage of a lull to explore the buildings 
himself, and had found a number of Spanish 
intrenching tools, picks, and shovels, and these 
we used in digging trenches along our line. 
The men were very tired indeed, but they went 
cheerfully to work, all the officers doing their 
part. 

Crockett, the ex-Revenue officer from 
Georgia, was a slight man, not physically 
very strong. He came to me and told me 
he didn't think he would be much use in dig- 
ging, but that he had found a lot of Spanish 
coffee and would spend his time making coffee 
for the men, if I approved. I did approve 
very heartily, and Crockett officiated as cook 
for the next three or four hours until the trench 
was dug, his coffee being much appreciated 
by all of us. 

So many acts of gallantry were performed 
during the day that it is quite impossible to 
notice them all, and it seem.s unjust to single 
out any ; yet I shall mention a few, which it 
must always be remembered are to stand, not 
as exceptions, but as instances of what very 
many men did. It happened that I saw these 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIAGO. 165 

myself. There were innumerable others, 
which either were not seen at all, or were 
seen only by officers who happened not to 
mention them ; and, of course, I know chiefly 
those that happened in my own regiment. 

Captain Llewellen was a large, heavy man, 
who had a grown-up son in the ranks. On 
the march he had frequently carried the load 
of some man who weakened, and he was not 
feeling well on the morning of the fight. 
Nevertheless, he kept at the head of his troop 
all day. In the charging and rushing, he not 
only became very much exhausted, but finally 
fell, wrenching himself terribly, and though he 
remained with us all night, he was so sick by 
morning that we had to take him behind the 
hill into an improvised hospital. Lieutenant 
Day, after handling his troops with equal 
gallantry and efficiency, was shot, on the 
summit of Kettle Hill. He was hit in the 
arm and was forced to go to the rear, but he 
would not return to the States, and rejoined 
us at the front long before his wound was 
healed. Lieutenant Leahy was also wounded, 
not far from him. Thirteen of the men were 
wounded and yet kept on fighting until the 
end of the day, and in some cases never went 
to the rear at all, even to have their wounds 
dressed. They were Corporals Waller and 



i66 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Fortescue and Trooper McKinley of Troop 
E ; Corporal Roades of Troop D ; Troopers 
Albertson, Winter, McGregor, and Ray Clark 
of Troop F ; Troopers Biigbee, Jackson, and 
Waller of Troop A ; Trumpeter McDonald 
of Troop L ; Sergeant Hughes of Troop B ; 
and Trooper Gievers of Troop G. One of 
the Wallers was a cowpuncher from New 
Mexico, the other the champion Yale high- 
jumper. The first was shot through the left 
arm so as to paralyze the fingers, but he con- 
tinued in battle, pointing his rifle over the 
wounded arm as though it had been a rest. 
The other Waller, and Bugbee, were hit in 
the head, the bullets merely inflicting scalp 
wounds. Neither of them paid any heed to 
the w^ounds except that after nightfall each 
had his head done up in a bandage. Fortescue 
I was at times using as an extra orderly. I 
noticed he limped, but supposed that his foot 
was skinned. It proved, however, that he 
had been struck in the foot, though not very 
seriously, by a bullet, and I never knew what 
was the matter until the next day I saw him 
making wry faces as he drew off his bloody 
boot, which was stuck fast to the foot. 
Trooper Rowland again distinguished himself 
by his fearlessness. 

For gallantry on the field of action Ser- 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIAGO, 167 

. geants Dame, Ferguson, Tiffany, Greenwald, 
and, later on Mcllhenny, were promoted 
to second lieutenancies, as Sergeant Hayes 
had already been. Lieutentant Carr, who 
commanded his troop, and behaved with great 
gallantry throughout the day, was shot and 
severely wounded at nightfall. He was the 
son of a Confederate officer ; his was th» fifth 
generation which, from father to son, had 
fought in every war of the United States. 
Among the men whom I noticed as leading in 
the charges and always being nearest the 
enemy, were the Pawnee, Pollock, Simpson of 
Texas, and Dudley Dean. Jenkins was made 
major, Woodbury Kane, Day, and Frantz 
captains, and Greenway and Goodrich first 
lieutenants, for gallantry in action, and for the 
efficiency with which the first had handled 
his squadron, — and the other five their troops 
— for each of them, owing to some accident to 
his superior, found himself in command of 
his troop. 

Dr. Church had worked quite as hard as 
any man at the front in caring for the wounded ; 
as had Chaplain Brown. Lieutenant Keyes, 
who acted as adjutant, did so well that he was 
given the position permanently. Lieutenant 
Coleman similarly won the position of quarter- 
master. 



1 68 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

We finished digging the trench soon after 
midnight, and then the worn-out men laid 
down in rows on their rifles and dropped 
heavily to sleep. About one in ten of them 
had blankets taken from the Spaniards. 
Henry Bardshar, my orderly, had procured 
one for me. He, Goodrich, and I slept to- 
gether. If the men without blankets had not 
been so tired that they fell asleep anyhow, 
they would have been very cold, for, of course, 
we were all drenched with sweat, and above 
the waist had on nothing but our flannel shirts, 
while the night was cool, with a heavy dew. 
Before any one had time to wake from the cold, 
however, we were all awakened by the Span- 
iards, whose skirmishers suddenly opened fire 
on us. Of course, we could not tell whether 
or not this was the forerunner of a heavy at- 
tack, for our Cossack posts were responding 
briskly. It was about three o'clock in the 
morning, at which time men's courage is said 
to be at the lowest ebb ; but the cavalry 
division was certainly free fron any weakness 
in that direction. At the alarm everybody 
jumped to his feet and the stiff, shivering, 
haggard men, their eyes only half opened, all 
clutched their rifles and ran forward to the 
trench on the crest of the hill. 

The sputtering shots died away and we went 



THE CAVALRY AT SA NTIA G O. 1 69 

to sleep again. But in another hour dawn 
broke and the Spaniards opened fire in good 
earnest. There was a Uttle tree only a few feet 
away, under which I made my headquarters, 
and while I was lying there, with Goodrich and 
Keyes, a shrapnel burst among us, not hurting 
us in the least, but with the sweep of its 
bullets killing or wounding five men in our 
rear, one of whom was a singularly gallant 
young Harvard fellow, Stanley Hollister. An 
equally gallant young fellow from Yale, 
Theodore Miller, had already been mortally 
wounded. Hollister also died. 

The Second Brigade lost more heavily than 
the First ; but neither its brigade commander 
nor any of its regimental commanders were 
touched, while the commander of the First 
Brigade and two of its three regimental com- 
manders had been killed or wounded. 

In this fight our regiment had numbered 
490 men, as, in addition to the killed and 
wounded of the first fight, some had had to go 
to the hospital for sickness and some had been 
left behind with the baggage, or were detailed 
on other duty. Eighty-nine were killed and 
wounded : the heaviest loss suffered by any 
regiment in the cavalry division. The Span- 
iards made a stiff fight, standing firm until we 
charged home. They fought much more 



1 7 o THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

stubbornly than at Las Guasimas. We ought 
to have expected this, for they have ahvays done 
well in holding intrenchments. On this day 
they showed themselves to be brave foes, 
worthy of honor for their gallantry. 

In the attack on the San Juan hills our 
forces numbered about 6,600.* There were 
about 4,500 Spaniards against us.f Our 

* According to the official reports, 5,104 officers and men of 
Kent's infantry, and 2,649 of the cavalry had been landed. My reg- 
iment is put down as 542 strong, instead of the real figure, 490, the 
difference being due to men who were in hospital and on guard at 
the sea-shore, etc. In other words, the total represents the total 
landed ; the details, etc., are included. General Wheeler, in his re- 
port of July 7th, puts these details as about fifteen per cent, of the 
whole of the force which was on the transports ; about eighty-five 
per cent, got forward and was in the fight 

t The total Spanish force in Santiago iinder General Linares was 
6,000 : 4,000 regulars, 1,000 volunteers, and ijpoo marines and 
sailors from the ships. ( Diary of the British Consul, Frederick 
W. Ramsden, entry of July ist.) Four thousand more troops en- 
tered next day. Of the 6,000 troops, 600 or thereabouts were at El 
Caney, and goo in the forts at the mouth of the harbor. Lieutenant 
Tejeiro states that there were 520 men at El Caney, 970 in the forts 
at the mouth of the harbor, and 3,000 in the lines, not counting the 
cavalry and civil guard which were in reserve. He certainly very 
much understates the Spanish force ; thus he nowhere accounts for the 
engineers mentioned on p. 135 : and his figures would make the total 
number of Spanish artillerymen but 32. He excludes the cavalry, 
the civil guard, and the marines which had been stationed at the 
Plaza del Toros ; yet he later mentions that these marines were 
brought up, and their commander, Bustamente, severely wounded; 
he states that the cavalry advanced to cover the retreat of the infan- 
try, and I myself saw the cavalry come forward, for the most part 
dismounted, when the Spaniards attempted a forward movement 
late in the afternoon, and we shot many of their horses ; while later 
I saw and conversed with officers and men of the civil guard who 
had been wounded at the same time — this in connection with re- 
turning them their wives and children, after the latter had tied from 
the city. Although the engineers are excluded, Lieutenant Tejeiro 
mentions that their colonel, as well as the colonel of the artillery, was 
wounded. Four thousand five hundred is surely an understatement 
of the forces which resisted the attack of the forces under Wheeler. 
Lieutenant Tejeiro is very careless in his figures. Thus in one 
place he states that the position of San Juan was held by two 
companies comprising 250 soldiers. Later he says it was held by 
three companies, whose strength he puts at 300— thus making them 
average 100 instead of 125 men apiece. He then mentions another 
echelon of two companies, so situated as to cross their fire with the 



THE CA VALR Y AT SANTIA GO. 171 

total loss in killed and wounded was 1,071. 
Of the cavalry division there were, all told, 
some 2,300 officers and men, of whom 375 
were killed and wounded. In the division 
over a fourth of the officers were killed or 
wounded, their loss being relatively half as 
great again as that of the enlisted men — which 
was as it should be. 

others. Doubtless the block-house and trenches at Fort San Juan 
proper were only held by three or four hundred men ; they were 
taken by the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry under Hawkins's im- 
mediate command ; and they formed but one point in the line of 
hills, trenches, ranch-houses, and block-houses which the Spaniards 
held, and from which we drove them. When the city capitulated 
later, over 8,000 unwounded troops and over 16,000 rifles and car- 
bines were surrendered ; by that time the marines and sailors had 
of course gone, and the volunteers had disbanded. 

In all these figures 1 have taken merely the statements from the 
Spanish side. I am inclined to think the actual numbers were much 
greater than those here given. Lieutenant Wiley, in his book In 
Cuba with Shafter, which is practically an official statement states 
that nearly 11,000 Spanish troops were surrendered; and this is the 
number given by the Spaniards, themselves, in the remarkable let- 
ter the captured soldiers addressed to General Shafter, which Wiley 
quotes in full. Lieutenant Tejeiro, in his chap. xiv. explains that 
the volunteers had disbanded before the end came, and the marines 
and sailors had of course gone, while nearly a thousand men had 
been killed or captured or had died of wounds and disease, so that 
there must have been at least 14,000 all told. Subtracting the 
reinforcements who arrived on the 2d, this would mean about 10,- 
000 Spaniards present on the ist: in which case Kent and Wheeler 
were opposed by at least equal numbers. 

In dealing with the Spanish losses. Lieutenant Tejeiro contra- 
dicts himself. He puts their total loss on this day at 593, includ- 
ing 94 killed, 121 missing, and 2 prisoners— 217 in all. Yet he 
states that of the 520 men at Caney but 80 got back, the remaining 
440 being killed, captured, or missing. When we captured the city 
we found in the hospitals over 2,000 seriously wounded and sick 
Spaniards ; on making inquiries, I found that over a third were 
wounded. From these facts I feel that it is safe to put down the 
total Spanish loss in battle as at least, 1200, of whom over a thou- 
sand were killed and wounded. 

Lieutenant Tejeiro, while rightly claiming credit for the courage 
shown by the Spaniards, also praises the courage and resolution of 
the Americans, saying that they fought, " con un arrojo y una deci- 
sion verdaderamente admirables." He dwells repeatedly upon 
the determination with which our troops kept charging though 
themselves unprotected by cover. As for the Spanish troops, all 
who fought them that day will most freely admit the courage they 



1 7 2 THE R UGH RIDERS. 

I think we suffered more heavily than the 
Spaniards did in killed and wounded (though 
we also captured some scores of prisoners). 
It would have been very extraordinary if the 
reverse was the case, for we did the charging ; 
and to carry earthworks on foot with dis- 
mounted cavalry, when these earthworks are 
held by unbroken infantry armed with the 
best modern rifles, is a serious task. 

showed. At El Caney, where they were nearly hemmed in, they 
made a most desperate defence ; at San Juan the way to retreat was 
open, and so, though they were seven times as numerous, they 
fought with less desperation, but still very gallantly. 



JN THE TRENCHES. 173 



V. 

IN THE TRENCHES. 

"117" HEN the shrapnel burst among us on 
the hill-side we made up our minds 
that we had better settle down to solid siege 
work. All of the men who were not in the 
trenches I took off to the right, back of the 
Gatling guns, where there was a valley, and dis- 
persed them by troops in sheltered parts. It 
took us an hour or two's experimenting to find 
out exactly what spots were free from dan- 
ger, because some of the Spanish sharp- 
shooters were in trees in our front, where 
we could not possibly place them from the 
trenches ; and these were able to reach little 
hollows and depressions where the men were 
entirely safe from the Spanish artillery and 
from their trench-fire. Moreover, in one 
hollow, which we thought safe, the Spaniards 
succeeded in dropping a shell, a fragment of 
which went through the head of one of my 
men, who, astonishing to say, lived, although 
unconscious, for two hours afterward. Finally, 
I got all eight troops settled, and the men 



174 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

promptly proceeded to make themselves as 
much at home as possible. For the next 
twenty-four hours, however, the amount of 
comfort was small, as in the way of protec- 
tion and covering we only had what blankets, 
rain-coats, and hammocks we took from the 
dead Spaniards. Ammunition, which was, 
of course, the most vital need, was brought 
up in abundance ; but very little food reached 
us. That afternoon we had just enough to 
allow each man for his supper two hardtacks, 
and one hardtack extra for every four men. 

During the first night we had dug trenches 
sufficient in length and depth to shelter our 
men and insure safety against attack, but we 
had not put in any traverses or approaches, 
nor had we arranged the trenches at all points 
in the best places for offensive work ; for we 
were working at night on ground which we 
had but partially explored. Later on an 
engineer officer stated that he did not think 
our work had been scientific ; and I assured 
him that I did not doubt that he was right, 
for I had never before seen a trench, except- 
ing those we captured from the Spaniards, or 
heard of a traverse, save as I vaguely remem- 
bered reading about them in books. For 
such work as we were engaged in, however, 
the problem of intrenchment was compara- 



IN THE TRENCHES. 175 

tively simple, and the work we did proved en- 
tirely adequate. No man in my regiment 
was ever hit in the trenches or going in or 
out of them. 

But on the first day there was plenty of ex- 
citement connected with relieving the firing 
line. Under the intense heat, crowded down 
in cramped attitudes in the rank, newly dug, 
poisonous soil of the trenches, the men needed 
to be relieved every six hours or so. Accord- 
ingly, in the late morning, and again in the 
afternoon, I arranged for their release. On 
each occasion I waited until there was a lull 
in the firing and then started a sudden rush 
by the relieving party, who tumbled into the 
trenches every which way. The movement 
resulted on each occasion in a terrific outburst 
of fire from the Spanish lines, which proved 
quite harmless ; and as it gradually died away 
the men who had been relieved got out as 
best they could. Fortunately, by the next 
day I was able to abandon this primitive, 
though thrilling and wholly novel, military 
method of relief. 

When the hardtack came up that afternoon 
I felt much sympathy for the hungry unfortu- 
nates in the trenches and hated to condemn 
them to six hours more without food ; but I 
did not know how to get food in to them. 



1 7 6 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Little McGinty, the bronco buster, volunteered 
to make the attempt, and I gave him permis- 
sion. He simply took a case of hardtack in 
his arms and darted toward the trenches. 
The distance was but short, and though there 
was an outburst of fire, he was actually 
missed. One bullet, however, passed through 
the case of hardtack just before he disap- 
peared with it into the trench. A trooper 
named Shanafelt repeated the feat, later, 
with a pail of coffee. Another trooper, 
George King, spent a leisure hour in the rear 
making soup out of some rice and other stuff 
he found in a Spanish house ; he brought 
some of it to General Wood, Jack Greenway, 
and myself, and nothing could have tasted 
more delicious. 

At this time our army in the trenches num- 
bered about ii,ooo men ; and the Spaniards 
-^1 in Santiago about 9,000,* their reinforcements 

' having just arrived. Nobody on the firing 

line, whatever was the case in the rear, felt 
the slightest uneasiness as to the Spaniards 
being able to break out ; but there were plenty 
who doubted the advisability of trying to rush 

' * This i« probably an understatement. Lieutenant Miiller, in 

chap, xxxviii. of his book, says that there were "eight or nine 
thousand; " this is exclusive of the men from the fleet, and appar- 
ently also of many of the volunteers (see chap, xiv.), all of whom 
were present on July 2d. I am inclined to think that on the eve- 
ning of that day there were more Spanish troops inside Santiago 
than there were American troops outside. 



IN THE TRENCHES. 177 

the heavy earthworks and wire defences in 
our front. 

All day long the firing continued — musketry 
and cannon. Our artillery gave up the 
attempt to fight on the firing Hne, and was 
withdrawn well to the rear out of range of the 
Spanish rifles ; so far as we could see, it ac- 
complished very little. The dynamite gun 
was brought up to the right of the regimental 
line. It was more effective than the regular 
artillery because it was fired with smokeless 
powder, and as it was used like a mortar 
from behind the hill, it did not betray its 
presence, and those firing it suffered no loss. 
Every few shots it got out of order, and the 
Rough Rider machinists and those furnished 
by Lieutenant Parker — whom we by this time 
began to consider as an exceedingly valuable 
member of our own regiment — would spend an 
hour or two in setting it right. Sergeant 
Borrowe had charge of it and handled it 
well. With him was Sergeant Guitilias, a 
gallant old fellow, a veteran of the Civil War, 
whose duties were properly those of standard- 
bearer, he having charge of the yellow cavalry 
standard of the regiment ; but in the Cuban 
campaign he was given the more active work 
of helping run the dynamite gun. The shots 
from the dynamite gun made a terrific ex- 
12 



178 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

plosion, but they did not seem to go accu- 
rately. Once one of them struck a Spanish 
trench and wrecked part of it. On another 
occasion one struck a big building, from 
which there promptly swarmed both Spanish 
cavalry and infantry, on whom the Colt auto- 
matic guns played with good effect, during 
the minute that elapsed before they could 
get other cover. 

These Colt automatic guns were not, on the 
whole, very successful. The gun detail was 
under the charge of Sergeant (afterward Lieu- 
cCnant) Tiffany, assisted by some of our best 
men, like Stephens, Crowninshield, Bradley, 
Smith, and Herrig. The guns were mounted 
on Tripods. They were too heavy for men 
to carry any distance and we could not always 
get mules. They would have been more effec- 
tive if mounted on wheels, as the Catlings 
were. Moreover, they proved more delicate 
than the Catlings, and very readily got out of 
order. A further and serious disadvantage 
was that they did not use the Krag ammuni- 
tion, as the Catlings did, but the Mauser am- 
munition. The Spanish cartridges which we 
captured came in quite handily for this reason. 
Parker took the same fatherly interest in these 
two Colts that he did in the dynamite gun, 
and finally I put all three and their men under 



^~~^ 



IN THE TRENCHES. 179 

his immediate care, so that he had a battery 
of seven gmis. 

In fact, I think Parker deserved rather more 
credit than any other one man in the entire 
campaign. I do not allude especially to his 
courage and energy, great though they were, 
for there were hundreds of his fellow-officers 
of the cavalry and infantry who possessed as 
much of the former quality, and scores who 
possessed as much of the latter ; but he had 
the rare good judgment and foresight to see 
the possibilities of the machine-guns, and, 
thanks to the aid of General Shafter, he was 
able to organize his battery. He then, by his 
own exertions, got it to the front and proved 
that it could do invaluable work on the field 
of battle, as much in attack as in defence. 
Parker's Catlings were our inseparable com- 
panions throughout the siege. After our 
trenches were put in final shape, he took off 
the wheels of a couple and placed them with 
our own two Colts in the trenches. His gun- 
ners slept beside the Rough Riders in the 
bomb-proofs, and the men shared with one 
another when either side got a supply of beans 
or of coffee and sugar ; for Parker was as 
wide-awake and energetic in getting food for 
his men as we prided ourselves upon being in 
getting food for ours. Besides, he got oil, 



l8o THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

and let our men have plenty for their rifles. 
At no hour of the day or night was Parker 
anywhere but where we wished him to be in 
the event of an attack. If I was ordered to 
send a troop of Rough Riders to guard some 
road or some break in the lines, we usually 
got Parker to send a Gatling along, and 
whether the change was made by day or by 
night, the Gatling went, over any ground and 
in any weather. He never exposed the Gat- 
lings needlessly or unless there was some ob- 
ject to be gained, but if serious fighting broke 
out, he always took a hand. Sometimes this 
fighting would be the result of an effort on 
our part to quell the fire from the Spanish 
trenches ; sometimes the Spaniards took the 
initiative ; but at whatever hour of the twenty- 
four serious fighting began, the drumming of 
the Gatlings was soon heard through the 
cracking of our own carbines. 

I have spoken thus of Parker's Gatling de- 
tachment. How can I speak highly enough 
of the regular cavalry with whom it was our 
good fortune to serve ? I do not believe that 
in any army of the world could be found a 
more gallant and soldierly body of fighters 
than the officers and men of the First, Third, 
Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth United States 
Cavalry, beside whom we marched to blood* 



IN THE TRENCHES. l8l 

bought victory under the tropic skies of San- 
tiago. The American regular sets the standard 
of excellence. When we wish to give the ut- 
most possible praise to a volunteer organiza- 
tion, we say that it is as good as the regulars. 
I was exceedingly proud of the fact that the 
regulars treated my regiment as on a complete 
equality with themselves, and were as ready 
to see it in a post of danger and responsibility 
as to see any of their own battalions. Lieu- 
tenant Colonel Dorst, a man from whom praise 
meant a good deal, christened us " the Eleventh 
United States Horse," and we endeavored, I 
think I may say successfully, to show that we 
deserved the title by our conduct, not only in 
fighting and in marching, but in guarding the 
trenches and In policing camp. In less than 
sixty days the regiment had been raised, or- 
ganized, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted, 
dismounted, kept for a fortnight on transports, 
and put through two victorious aggressive 
fights in very difficult country, the loss in 
killed and wounded amounting to a quarter of 
those engaged. This is a record which it is 
not easy to match in the history of volunteer 
organizations. The loss was but small com- 
pared to that which befell hundreds of regi- 
ments in some of the great battles of the later 
years of the Civil War ; but it may be doubted 



1 8 2 THE R UGH RIDERS. 

whether there was any regiment which made 
such a record during the first months of any 
of our wars. 

After the battle of San Juan my men had 
really become veterans ; they and I under- 
stood each other perfectly, and trusted each 
other implicitly ; they knew I would share 
every hardship and danger with them, would 
do everything in my power to see that they 
were fed, and so far as might be, sheltered 
and spared ; and in return I knew that they 
would endure every kind of hardship and 
fatigue without a murmur and face every dan- 
ger with entire fearlessness. I felt utter con- 
fidence in them, and would have been more 
than willing to put them to any task which 
any crack regiment of the world, at home or 
abroad, could perform. They were natural 
fighters, men of great intelligence, great 
courage, great hardihood, and physical 
prowess ; and I could draw on these qualities 
and upon their spirit of ready, soldierly obe- 
dience to make up for any deficiencies in 
the technique of the trade which they had 
temporarily adopted. It must be remembered 
that they were already good individual fighters, 
skilled in the use of the horse and the rifle, 
so that there was no need of putting them 
through the kind of training in which the 



IN THE TRENCHES. 183 

ordinary raw recruit must spend his first year 
or two. 

On July 2d, as the day wore on, the fight, 
though raging fitfully at intervals, gradually 
died away. The Spanish guerillas were caus- 
ing us much trouble. They showed great 
courage, exactly as did their soldiers who 
were defending the trenches. In fact, the 
Spaniards throughout showed precisely the 
qualities they did early in the century, when, 
as every student will remember, their fleets 
were a helpless prey to the English war-ships, 
and their armies utterly unable to stand in the 
open against those of Napoleon's marshals, 
while on the other hand their guerillas per- 
formed marvellous feats, and their defence of 
intrenchments and walled towns, as at Sara- 
gossa and Gerona, were the wonder of the 
civilized world. 

In our front their sharp-shooters crept up 
before dawn and either lay in the thick jungle 
or climbed into some tree with dense foliage. 
In these places it proved almost impossible 
to place them, as they kept cover very 
carefully, and their smokeless powder be- 
trayed not the slightest sign of their where- 
abouts. They caused us a great deal of an- 
noyance and some little loss, and though our 
own sharp-shooters were continually taking 



1 84 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

shots at the places where they supposed them 
to be, and though occasionally we would play 
a Gatling or a Colt all through the top of a 
suspicious tree, I but twice saw Spaniards 
brought down out of their perches from in 
front of our lines — on each occasion the fall 
of the Spaniard being hailed with loud cheers 
by our men. 

These sharp-shooters in our front did per- 
fectly legitimate work, and were entitled to 
all credit for their courage and skill. It was 
different with the guerillas in our rear. Quite 
a number of these had been posted in trees at 
the time of the San Juan fight. They were 
using, not Mausers, but Remingtons, which 
shot smokeless powder and a brass-coated 
bullet. It was one of these bullets which had 
hit Winslow Clark by my side on Kettle Hill ; 
and though for long-range fighting the Rem- 
ingtons were, of course, nothing like as good 
as the Mausers, they were equally serviceable 
for short-range bush work, as they used 
smokeless powder. When our troops ad- 
vanced and the Spaniards in the trenches and 
in reserve behind the hill iled, the guerillas 
in the trees had no time to get away and in 
consequence were left in the rear of our lines. 
As we found out from the prisoners we took, 
the Spanish officers had been careful to instil 



IN THE TRENCHES, 185 

into the minds of their soldiers the belief that 
the Americans never granted quarter, and I 
suppose it was in consequence of this that 
the guerillas did not surrender ; for we found 
that the Spaniards were anxious enough to 
surrender as soon as they became convinced 
that we would treat them mercifully. At any 
rate, these guerillas kept up in their trees and 
showed not only courage but wanton cruelty 
and barbarity. At times they fired upon 
armed men in bodies, but they much preferred 
for their victims the unarmed attendants, the 
doctors, the chaplains, the hospital stewards. 
They fired at the men who were bearing off 
the wounded in litters ; they fired at the doc- 
tors who came to the front, and at the chap- 
lains who started to hold burial service ; the 
conspicuous Red Cross brassard worn by all 
of these non-combatants, instead of serving 
as a protection, seemed to make them the 
special objects of the guerilla fire. So annoy- 
ing did they become that I sent out that after- 
noon and next morning a detail of picked 
sharp-shooters to hunt them out, choosing, of 
course, first-class woodsmen and mountain 
men who were also good shots. My sharp' 
shooters felt very vindictively toward these 
guerillas and showed them no quarter. They 
started systematically to hunt them, and 



1 86 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

showed themselves much superior at the 
guerillas' own game, killing eleven, while not 
one of my men was scratched. Two of the 
men who did conspicuously good service in 
this work were Troopers Goodwin and Proffit 
both of Arizona, but one by birth a Califor- 
nian and the other a North Carolinian. Good- 
win was a natural shot, not only with the rifle 
and revolver, but with the sling. Proffit 
might have stood as a type of the mountaineers 
described by John Fox and Miss Murfree. 
He was a tall, sinewy, handsome man of re- 
markable strength, an excellent shot and a 
thoroughly good soldier. His father had been 
a Confederate officer, rising from the ranks, 
and if the war had lasted long enough the 
son would have risenln the same manner. 
As it was, I should have been glad to have 
given him a commission, exactly as I should 
have been glad to have given a number of 
others in the regiment commissions, if I had 
only had them. Proffit was a saturnine, re- 
served man, who afterward fell very sick with 
the fever, and who, as a reward for his soldierly 
good conduct, was often granted unusual priv- 
ileges ; but he took the fever and the privi- 
leges with the same iron indifference, never 
grumbling, and never expressing satisfaction. 
The sharp-shooters returned by nightfall. 



IN THE TRENCHES. 187 

Soon afterward I established my pickets and 
outposts well to the front in the jungle, so as 
to prevent all possibility of surprise. After 
dark, fires suddenly shot up on the mountain 
passes far to our right. They all rose together 
and we could make nothing of them. After a 
good deal of consultation, we decided they 
must be some signals to the Spaniards in Santi- 
ago from the troops marching to reinforce them 
from without — for we were ignorant that the 
reinforcements had already reached the city, 
the Cubans being quite unable to prevent the 
Spanish regulars from marching wherever 
they wished. While we were thus pondering 
over the watch-fires and attributing them to 
Spanish machinations of some sort, it appears 
that the Spaniards, equally puzzled, were set- 
ting them down as an attempt at communica- 
tion between the insurgents and our army. 
Both sides were accordingly on the alert, and 
the Spaniards must have strengthened their 
outlying parties in the jungle ahead of us, for 
they suddenly attacked one of our pickets, 
wounding Crockett seriously. He was brought 
in by the other troopers. Evidently the Span- 
ish lines felt a little nervous, for this sputter 
of shooting was immediately followed by a 
tremendous fire of great guns and rifles 
from their trenches and batteries. Our men 



1 88 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

in the trenches responded heavily, and word 
was sent back, not only to me, but to the com- 
manders in the rear of the regiments along 
our line, that the Spaniards were attacking. 
It was imperative to see wdiat was really going 
on, so I ran up to the trenches and looked out. 
At night it was far easier to place the Spanish 
lines than by day, because the flame-spurts 
shone in the darkness. I could soon tell that 
there were bodies of Spanish pickets or 
skirmishers in the jungle-covered valley, be- 
tween their lines and ours, but that the bulk 
of the fire came from their trenches and showed 
not the slightest symptom of advancing ; more- 
over, as is generally the case at night, the fire 
was almost all high, passing well overhead, 
with an occasional bullet near by. 

I came to the conclusion that there was no use 
in our firing back under such circumstances ; 
and I could tell that the same conclusion had 
been reached by Captain x\yres of the Tenth 
Cavalry on the right of my line, for even 
above the cracking of the carbines rose 
the Captain's voice as with varied and pic- 
turesque language he bade his black troop- 
ers cease firing. The Captain was as abso- 
lutely fearless as a man can be. He had com- 
mand of his regimental trenches that night, 
and, having run up at the first alarm, had 



IN THE TRENCHES. 189 

speedily satisfied himself that no particular 
purpose was served by blazing away in the 
dark, when the enormous majority of the 
Spaniards were simply shooting at random 
from their own trenches, and, if they ever had 
thought of advancing, had certainly given up 
the idea. His troopers were devoted to him, 
would follow him anywhere, and would do 
anything he said ; but when men get firing at 
night it is rather difficult to stop them, espe- 
cially when the fire of the enemy in front con- 
tinues unabated. When he first reached the 
trenches it was impossible to say whether or 
not there was an actual night attack impend- 
ing, and he had been instructing his men, as 
I instructed mine, to fire low, cutting the grass 
in front. As soon as he became convinced 
that there was no night attack, he ran up and 
down the line adjuring and commanding the 
troopers to cease shooting, with words and 
phrases which were doubtless not wholly un- 
like those which the Old Guard really did use 
at Waterloo. As I ran down my own line, I 
could see him coming up his, and he saved me 
all trouble in stopping the fire at the right, 
where the lines met, for my men there all 
dropped everything to listen to him and cheer 
and laugh. Soon we got the troopers in hand, 
and made them cease firing ; then, after 



190 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



awhile, the Spanish fire died down. At the 
time we spoke of this as a night attack by the 
Spaniards, but it really was not an attack at 
all. Ever after my men had a great regard 
for Ayres, and would have followed him any- 
where. I shall never forget the way in which 
he scolded his huge, devoted black troopers, 
generally ending with "I'm ashamed of you, 
ashamed of you ! I wouldn't have believed it ! 
Firing ; when I told you to stop ! I'm ashamed 
of you ! " 

That night we spent in perfecting the 
trenches and arranging entrances to them, 
doing about as much work as we had the 
preceding night. Greenway and Goodrich, 
from their energy, eagerness to do every 
duty, and great physical strength, were pecu- 
liarly useful in this work ; as, indeed, they 
were in all work. They had been up practi- 
cally the entire preceding night, but they 
were too good men for me to spare them, 
nor did they wish to be spared ; and I kept 
them up all this night too. Goodrich had 
also been on guard as officer of the day the 
night we were at El Paso, so that it turned 
out that he spent nearly four days and three 
nights with practically hardly any sleep at all. 

Next morning, at daybreak, the firing be- 
gan again. This day, the 3d, we suffered 



IN THE TRENCHES. • " 191 

nothing, save having one man wounded by a 
sharp-shooter, and, thanks to the approaches 
to the trenches, we were able to relieve the 
guards without any difficulty. The Spanish 
sharp-shooters in the trees and jungle near- 
by, however, annoyed us very much, and I 
made preparations to fix them next day. 
With this end in view I chose out some 
twenty first-class men, in many instances the 
same that I had sent after the guerillas, and 
arranged that each should take his canteen 
and a little food. They were to slip into the 
jungle between us and the Spanish lines be- 
fore dawn next morning, and there to spend 
the day, getting as close to the Spanish Unes 
as possible, moving about with great stealth, 
and picking off any hostile sharp-shooter, as 
well as any soldier who exposed himself in 
the trenches. I had plenty of men who 
possessed a training in wood-craft that fitted 
them for this work ; and as soon as the rumor 
got abroad what I was planning, volunteers 
thronged to me. Daniels and Love were two 
of the men always to the front in any enter- 
prise of this nature ; so were Wadsworth, 
the two Bulls, Fortescue, and Cowdin. But I 
could not begin to name all the troopers who 
so eagerly craved the chance to win honor 
out of hazard and danger. 



1 9 2 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

Among them was good, solemn Fred Her- 
rig, the Alsatian. I knew Fred's patience 
and skill as a hunter from the trips we had 
taken together after deer and mountain sheep 
through the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri. 
He still spoke English with what might be 
called Alsatian variations — he always spoke 
of the gun detail as the '' gondetle," with the 
accent on the first syllable — and he expressed 
a wish to be allowed " a holiday from the 
gondetle to go after dem gorrillas." I told 
him he could have the holiday, but to his 
great disappointment the truce came first, 
and then Fred asked that, inasmuch as the 
" gorrillas " were now forbidden game, he 
might be allowed to go after guinea-hens in- 
stead. 

Even after the truce, however, some of my 
sharp-shooters had occupation, for two guer- 
illas in our rear took occasional shots at the 
men who were bathing in a pond, until one 
of our men spied them, when they were both 
speedily brought down. One of my riflemen 
who did best at this kind of work, by the way, 
got into trouble because of it. He was much 
inflated by my commendation of him, and 
when he went back to his troop he declined to 
obey the first Sergeant's orders on the ground 
that he was " the Colonel's sharp-shooter." 



IN THE TRENCHES, 



^93 



The Lieutenant in command, being some- 
what puzzled, brought him to me, and I had 
to explain that if the offence, disobedience of 
orders in face of the enemy, was repeated he 
might incur the death penalty ; whereat he 
looked very crestfallen. That afternoon he 
got permission, like Fred Herrig, to go after 
guinea-hens, which were found wild in some 
numbers round about ; and he sent me the 
only one he got as a peace offering. The 
few guinea-hens thus procured were all used 
for the sick. 

Dr. Church had established a little field hos- 
pital under the shoulder of the hill in our 
rear. He was himself very sick and had al> 
most nothing in the way of medicine or sup- 
plies or apparatus of any kind, but the condi- 
tion of the wounded in the big field hospitals 
in the rear was so horrible, from the lack of 
attendants as well as of medicines, that we 
kept all the men we possibly could at the 
front. Some of them had now begun to come 
down with fever. They were all very patient, 
but it was pitiful to see the sick and wounded 
soldiers lying on their blankets, if they had 
any, and if not then simply in the mud, with 
nothing to eat but hardtack and pork, which 
of course they could not touch when their 
fever got high, and with no chance to get 
13 



194 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

more than the rudest attention. Among the 
very sick here was gallant Captain Llewellen. 
I feared he was going to die. We finally had 
to send him to one of the big hospitals in 
the rear. Doctors Brewer and Fuller of the 
Tenth had been unwearying in attending to 
the wounded, including many of those of my 
regiment. 

At twelve o'clock we were notified to stop 
firing and a flag of truce was sent in to demand 
the surrender of the city. The negotiations 
gave us a breathing spell. 

That afternoon I arranged to get our bag- 
gage up, sending back strong details of men 
to carry up their own goods, and, as usual, 
impressing into the service a kind of impro- 
vised pack-train consisting of the officer's 
horses, of two or three captured Spanish cav- 
alry horses, two or three mules which had 
been shot and abandoned and which our men 
had taken and cured, and two or three Cuban 
ponies. Hitherto we had simply been sleep- 
ing by the trenches or immediately in their 
rear, with nothing in the way of shelter and 
only one blanket to every three or four men. 
Fortunately there had been little rain. We 
now got up the shelter tents of the men and 
some flies for the hospital and for the officers ; 
and my personal baggage appeared. I eel' 



IN THE TRENCHES. 195 

ebrated its advent by a thorough wash and 
shave. 

Later, I twice snatched a few^ hours to go 
to the rear and visit such of my men as I 
could find in the hospitals. Their patience 
was extraordinary. Kenneth Robinson, a 
gallant young trooper, though himself severely 
(I supposed at the time mortally) wounded, 
was noteworthy for the way in which he tend- 
ed those among the wounded who were even 
more helpless, and 'the cheery courage with 
which he kept up their spirits. Gievers, who 
was shot through the hips, rejoined us at the 
front in a fortnight. Captain Day was hardly 
longer away. Jack Hammer, who, with poor 
Race Smith, a gallant Texas lad who was 
mortally hurt beside me on the summit of the 
hill, had been on kitchen detail, was wounded 
and sent to the rear ; he was ordered to go to 
the United States, but he heard that we were 
to assault Santiago, so he struggled out to 
rejoin us, and thereafter stayed at the front. 
Cosby, badly wounded, made his way down 
to the sea-coast in three days, unassisted. 

With all volunteer troops, and I am inclined 
to think with regulars, too, in time of trial, 
the best work can be got out of the men only 
if the officers endure the same hardships and 
face the same risks. In my regiment, as in 



196 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

the whole cavalry division, the proportion of 
loss in killed and wounded was considerably 
greater among the officers than among the 
troopers, and this was exactly as it should be. 
Moreover, when we got down to hard pan, we 
all officers and men, fared exactly alike as 
regards both shelter and food. This prevented 
any grumbling. When the troopers saw that 
the officers had nothing but hardtack, there 
was not a man in the regiment who would 
not have been ashamed to grumble at faring 
no worse, and when all alike slept out in the 
open, in the rear of the trenches, and when 
the men always saw the field officers up at 
night, during the digging of the trenches, 
and going the rounds of the outposts, they 
would not tolerate, in any of their number, 
either complaint or shirking work. When 
things got easier I put up my tent and lived 
a little apart, for it is a mistake for an officer 
ever to grow too familiar with his men, no mat- 
ter how good they are ; and it is of course the 
greatest possible mistake to seek popularity 
either by showing weakness or by mollycod- 
dling the men. They will never respect a 
commander who does not enforce discipline, 
who does not know his duty, and who is not 
willing both himself to encounter and to make 
them encounter every species of danger and 



IN THE TRENCHES. I97 

hardship when necessary. The soldiers who 
do not feel this way are not worthy of the 
name and should be handled with iron sever- 
ity until they become fighting men and not 
shams. In return the officer should carefully 
look after his men, should see that they are 
well fed and well sheltered, and that, no matter 
how much they may grumble, they keep the 
camp thoroughly policed. 

After the cessation of the three days' fight- 
ing we began to get our rations regularly and 
had plenty of hardtack and salt pork, and 
usually about half the ordinary amount of 
sugar and coffee. It was not a very good 
ration for the tropics, however, and was of 
very little use indeed to the sick and half sick. 
On two or three occasions during the siege I 
got my improvised pack-train together and 
either took or sent it down to the sea-coast 
for beans, canned tomatoes, and the like. 
We got these either from the transports which 
were still landing stores on the beach or from 
the Red Cross. If I did not go myself I sent 
some man who had shown that he was a driv- 
ing, energetic, tactful fellow, who would some- 
how get what we wanted. Chaplain Brown 
developed great capacity in this line, and so 
did one of the troopers named Knoblauch, he 
who had dived after the rifles that had sunk 



198 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

off the pier at Daiquiri. The suppUes of 
food we got in this way had a very beneficial 
effect, not only upon the men's health, but 
upon their spirits. To the Red Cross and 
similar charitable organizations we owe a 
great deal. We also owed much to Colonel 
Weston of the Commissary Department, who 
always helped us and never let himself be 
hindered by red tape ; thus he always let me 
violate the absurd regulation which forbade 
me, even in war time, to purchase food for 
my men from the stores, although letting me 
purchase for the ofhcers. I, of course, paid 
no heed to the regulation when by violat- 
ing it I could get beans, canned tomatoes, or 
tobacco. Sometimes I used my own money, 
sometimes what was given me by Woody Kane, 
or what was sent me by my brother-in-law, 
Douglas Robinson, or by the other Red Cross 
people in New York. My regiment did not 
fare very well ; but I think it fared better than 
any other. Of course no one would have 
minded in the least such hardships as we en- 
• dured had there been any need of enduring 
them ; but there was none. System and suf- 
ficiency of transportation were all that were 
needed. 

On one occasion a foreign military attache 
visited my head-quarters together with a for- 



IN THE TRENCHES. 199 

eign correspondent who had been through the 
Turco-Greek war. They were both most 
friendly critics, and as they knew I was aware 
of this, the correspondent finally ventured the 
remark, that he thought our soldiers fought 
even better than the Turks, but that on the 
whole our system of military administration 
seemed rather worse than that of the Greeks. 
As a nation we had prided ourselves on our 
business ability and adroitness in the arts of 
peace, while outsiders, at any rate, did not 
credit us with any especial warlike prowess ; 
and it was curious that when war came we 
should have broken down precisely on the 
business and administrative side, while the 
fighting edge of the troops certainly left little 
to be desired. 

I was very much touched by the devotion 
my men showed to me. After they had once 
become convinced that I would share their 
hardships, they made it a point that I should 
not suffer any hardships at all ; and I really 
had an extremely easy time. Whether I had 
any food or not myself made no difference, as 
there were sure to be certain troopers, and, 
indeed, certain troop messes, on the lookout 
for me. If they had any beans they would 
send me over a cupful, or I would suddenly 
receive a present of doughnuts from some ex- 



2 00 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

roundup cook who had succeeded in obtain- 
ing a little flour and sugar, and if a man shot 
a guinea-hen it was all I could do to make 
him keep half of it for himself. Wright, the 
color sergeant, and Henry Bardshar, my 
orderly, always pitched and struck my tent 
and built me a bunk of bamboo poles, when- 
ever we changed camp. So I personally en- 
dured very little discomfort ; for, of course, no 
one minded the two or three days preceding 
or following each fight, when we all had to get 
along as best we could. Indeed, as long as 
we were under fire or in the immediate pres- 
ence of the enemy, and I had plenty to do, 
there was nothing of which I could legiti- 
mately complain ; and what I really did regard 
as hardships, my men did not object to — for 
later on, when we had some leisure, I would 
have given much for complete solitude and 
some good books. 

Whether there was a truce, or whether, as 
sometimes happened, we were notified that 
there was no truce but merely a further ces- 
sation of hostilities by tacit agreement, or 
whether the fight was on, we kept equally vigi- 
lant watch, especially at night. In the trenches 
every fourth man kept awake, the others sleep- 
ing beside or behind him on their rifles ; and 
the Cossack posts and pickets were pushed 



IN THE TRENCHES. 2 0l 

out in advance beyond the edge of the jungle. 
At least once a night at some irregular hour 
I tried to visit every part of our line, espe- 
cially if it was dark and rainy, although some- 
times, when the lines were in charge of some 
officer like Wilcox or Kane, Greenway or Good- 
rich, I became lazy, took off my boots, and 
slept all night through. Sometimes at night I 
went not only along the lines of our own 
brigade, but of the brigades adjoining. It was 
a matter of pride, not only with me, but with 
all our men, that the lines occupied by the 
Rough Riders should be at least as vigilantly 
guarded as the lines of any regular regiment. 
Sometimes at night, when I met other of- 
ficers inspecting their lines, we would sit and 
talk over matters, and wonder what shape the 
outcome of the siege would take. We knew 
we would capture Santiago, but exactly how 
we would do it we could not tell. The failure 
to establish any depot for provisions on the 
fighting-line, where there was hardly ever more 
than twenty-four hours' food ahead, made the 
risk very serious. If a hurricane had struck 
the transports, scattering them to the four 
winds, or if three days of heavy rain had com- 
pletely broken up our communication, as they 
assuredly would have done, we would have 
been at starvation point on the front ; and 



2 02 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

while, of course, we would have lived through 
it somehow and would have taken the city, it 
would only have been after very disagreeable 
experiences. As soon as I was able I accu- 
mulated for my own regiment about forty-eight 
hours' hardtack and salt pork, which I kept so 
far as possible intact to provide against any 
emergency. 

If the city could be taken without direct as- 
sault on the intrenchments and wire entangle- 
ments, we earnestly hoped it would be, for 
such an assault meant, as we knew by past 
experience, the loss of a quarter of the attack- 
ing regiments (and we were bound that the 
Rough Riders should be one of these attack- 
ing regiments, if the attack had to be made). 
There was, of course, nobody who would not 
rather have assaulted than have run the risk 
of failure ; but we hoped the city would fall 
without need arising for us to suffer the great 
loss of life which a further assault would have 
entailed. 

Naturally, the colonels and captains had 
nothing to say in the peace negotiations which 
dragged along for the week following the 
sending in the flag of truce. Each day we 
expected either to see the city surrender, or 
to be told to begin fighting again, and toward 
the end it grew so irksome that we would have 



IN THE TRENCHES, 203 

welcomed even an assault in preference to 
further inaction. I used to discuss matters 
with the officers of my own regiment now and 
then, and with a few of the officers of the 
neighboring regiments with whom I had struck 
up a friendship — Parker, Stevens, Beck, Ayres 
Morton, and Boughton. I also saw a good 
deal of the excellent officers on the staffs 
of Generals Wheeler and Sumner, especially 
Colonel Dorst, Colonel Garlington, Captain 
Howze, Captain Steele, Lieutenant Andrews, 
and Captain Astor Chanler, who, like myself, 
was a volunteer. Chanler was an old friend 
and a fellow big-game hunter, who had done 
some good exploring work in Africa. I al- 
ways wished I could have had him in my regi- 
ment. As for Dorst, he was peculiarly fitted 
to command a regiment. Although Howze 
and Andrews were not in my brigade, I saw a 
great deal of them, especially of Howze, who 
would have made a nearly ideal regimental 
commander. They were both natural cavalry- 
men and of most enterprising natures, ever 
desirous of pushing to the front and of taking 
the boldest course. The view Howze always 
took of every emergency (a view which found 
prompt expression in his actions when the 
opportunity offered) made me feel like an 
elderly conservative. 



204 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

The week of non-fighting was not all a 
period of truce ; part of the time was passed 
under a kind of nondescript arrangement, when 
we were told not to attack ourselves, but to 
be ready at any moment to repulse an attack 
and to make preparations for meeting it. Dur- 
ing these times I busied myself in putting our 
trenches into first-rate shape and in building 
bomb-proofs and traverses. One night I got 
a detail of sixty men from the First, Ninth, 
and Tenth, whose officers always helped us in 
every way, and with these, and with sixty of 
my own men, I dug a long, zigzag trench in 
advance of the salient of my line out to a 
knoll well in front, from which we could com- 
mand the Spanish trenches and block-houses 
immediately ahead of us. On this knoll we 
made a kind of bastion consisting of a deep, 
semi-circular trench with sand-bags arranged 
along the edge so as to constitute a wall with 
loop-holes. Of course, when I came to dig 
this trench, I kept both Greenway and Good- 
rich supervising the w^ork all night, and equally 
of course I got Parker and Stevens to help 
me. By employing as many men as we did 
we were able to get the work so far advanced 
as to provide against interruption before the 
moon rose, which was about midnight. Our 
pickets were thrown far out in the jungle, to 



IN THE TRENCHES. 205 

keep back the Spanish pickets and prevent 
any interference with the diggers. The men 
seemed to think the work rather good fun than 
otherwise, the possibiHty of a brush with the 
Spaniards lending a zest that prevented its 
growing monotonous. 

Parker had taken two of his Catlings, re- 
moved the wheels, and mounted them in the 
trenches ; also mounting the two automatic 
Colts where he deemed they could do best 
service. With the completion of the trenches, 
bomb-proofs, and traverses, and the mounting 
of these guns, the fortifications of the hill as- 
sumed quite a respectable character, and the 
Catling men christened it Fort Roosevelt, by 
which name it afterward went.* 

During the truce various military attaches 
and foreign officers came out to visit us. Two 
or three of the newspaper men, including 
Richard Harding Davis, Casper Whitney, and 
John Fox, had already been out to see us, and 
had been in the trenches during the firing. 
Among the others were Captains Lee and 
Paget of the British army and navy, fine fel- 
lows, who really seemed to take as much pride 
in the feats of our men as if we had been 
bound together by the ties of a common 
nationality instead of the ties of race and 

* See Parker's " With the GatUngs at Sanliago." 



2o6 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

speech kinship. Another English visitor was 
Sir Bryan Leighton, a thrice-welcome guest, 
for he most thoughtfully brought to me half a 
dozen little jars of devilled ham and potted 
fruit, which enabled me to summon various 
officers down to my tent and hold a feast. 
Count von Gotzen, and a Norwegian attache, 
Gedde, very good fellows both, were also out. 
One day we were visited by a traveling 
Russian, Prince X., a large, blond man, 
smooth and impenetrable. I introduced him 
to one of the regular army officers, a capital 
fighter and excellent fellow, who, however, 
viewed foreign international politics from a 
strictly trans-Mississippi stand-point. He 
hailed the Russian with frank kindness and 
took him off to show him around the trenches, 
chatting volubly, and calling him " Prince," 
much as Kentuckians call one another 
*' Colonel." As I returned I heard him re- 
marking : " You see, Prince, the great result 
of this war is that it has united the two 
branches of the Anglo-Saxon people; and 
now that they are together they can w^hip the 
world. Prince ! they can whip the world," 
• — being evidently filled with the pleasing 
belief that the Russian would cordially sympa- 
thize with this view. 

The foreign attaches did not always get on 



IN THE TRENCHES. 207 

well with our generals. The two English 
representatives never had any trouble, were 
heartily admired by everybody, and, indeed, 
were generally treated as if they were of our 
own number ; and seemingly so regarded 
themselves. But this was not always true of 
the representatives from Continental Europe. 
One of the latter — a very good fellow, by the 
way — had not altogether approved of the way 
he was treated, and the climax came when he 
said good-by to the General who had special 
charge of him. The General in question was 
not accustomed to nice ethnic distinctions, 
and grouped all of the representatives from 
Continental Europe under the comprehensive 
title of '' Dutchmen." When the attach^ in 
question came to say farewell, the General 
responded wdth a bluff heartiness, in which 
perhaps the note of sincerity was more con- 
spicuous than that of entire good breeding: 
" Well, good-by ; sorry you're going ; which are 
you anyhow — the German or the Russian ? " 

Shortly after midday on the loth fighting 
began again, but it soon became evident that 
the Spaniards did not have much heart in it. 
The American field artillery was now under 
the command of General Randolph, and he 
fought it effectively. A mortar battery had 
also been established, though with an utterly 



2o8 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

inadequate supply of ammunition, and this 
rendered some service. Almost the only- 
Rough Riders who had a chance to do much 
firing were the men with the Colt automatic 
guns, and the twenty picked sharp-shooters, 
who were placed in the newly dug little fort 
out at the extreme front. Parker had a 
splendid time with the Catlings and the Colts. 
With these machine guns he completely 
silenced the battery in front of us. This bat- 
tery had caused us a good deal of trouble at 
first, as we could not place it. It was imme- 
diately in front of the hospital, from which 
many Red Cross flags were flying, one of 
them floating just above this battery, from 
where we looked at it. In consequence, for 
some time, we did not know it was a hostile 
battery at all, as, like all the other Spanish 
batteries, it was using smokeless powder. It 
was only by the aid of powerful glasses that 
we finally discovered its real nature. The 
Catlings and Colts then actually put it out of 
action, silencing the big guns and the two 
field-pieces. Furthermore, the machine guns 
and our sharp-shooters together did good work 
in supplementing the effects of the dynamite 
crun ; for when a shell from the latter struck 
near a Spanish trench, or a building in which 
there were Spanish troops, the shock was 



IN THE TRENCHES. 209 

seemingly so great that the Spaniards almost 
always showed themselves, and gave our men 
a chance to do some execution. 

As the evening of the loth came on, the 
men began to make their coffee in sheltered 
places. By this time they knew how to take 
care of themselves so well that not a man was 
touched by the Spaniards during the second 
bombardment. While I was lying with the 
officers just outside one of the bomb-proofs I 
saw a New Mexican trooper named Morrison 
making his coffee under the protection of a 
traverse high up on the hill. Morrison was 
originally a Baptist preacher who had joined 
the regiment purely from a sense of duty, 
leaving his wife and children, and had shown 
himself to be an excellent soldier. He had 
evidently exactly calculated the danger zone, 
and found that by getting close to the traverse 
he could sit up erect and make ready his sup- 
per without being cramped. I watched him 
solemnly pounding the coffee with the butt 
end of his revolver, and then boiling the water 
and frying his bacon, just as if he had been 
in the lee of the roundup wagon somewhere 
out on the plains. 

By noon of next day, the nth, my reg- 
iment with one of the Gatlings was shifted over 
to the right to guard the Caney road. We 
14 



2 1 o THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

did no fighting in our new position, for the 
last straggling shot had been fired by the 
time we got there. That evening there came 
up the worst storm we had had, and by mid- 
night my tent blew over. I had for the first 
time in a fortnight undressed myself com- 
pletely, and I felt fully punished for my love 
of luxury when I jumped out into the driving 
downpour of tropic rain, and groped blindly 
in the darkness for my clothes as they lay in 
the liquid mud. It was Kane's night on 
guard, and I knew the wretched Woody 
would be out along the line and taking care 
of the pickets, no matter what the storm 
might be ; and so I basely made my way to 
the kitchen tent, where good Holderman, the 
Cherokee, wrapped me in dry blankets, and 
put me to sleep on a table which he had just 
procured from an abandoned Spanish house. 

On the 17th the city formally surrendered 
and our regiment, like the rest of the army, 
was drawn up on the trenches. When the 
American flag was hoisted the trumpets blared 
and the men cheered, and we knew that the 
fighting part of our work was over. 

Shortly after we took our new position the 
First Illinois Volunteers came up on our right. 
The next day, as a result of the storm and of 
further rain, the rivers were up and the roads 



IN THE TRENCHES. 2ii 

quagmires, so that hardly any food reached the 
front. My regiment was all right, as we had 
provided for just such an emergency ; but the 
Illinois new-comers had of course not done 
so, and they were literally without anything 
to eat. They were fine fellows and we could 
not see them suffer. I furnished them some 
beans and coffee for the elder officers and 
two or three cases of hardtack for the men, 
and then mounted my horse and rode down to 
head-quarters, half fording, half swimming the 
streams ; and late in the evening I succeeded 
in getting half a mule-train of provisions for 
them. 

On the morning of the 3d the Spaniards 
had sent out of Santiago many thousands of 
women, children, and other non-combatants, 
most of them belonging to the poorer classes, 
but among them not a few of the best fami- 
lies. These wretched creatures took very 
little with them. They came through our 
lines and for the most part went to EI 
Caney in our rear, where we had to feed them 
and protect them from the Cubans. As we 
had barely enough food for our own men the 
rations of the refugees were scanty indeed 
and their sufferings great. Long before the 
surrender they had begun to come to our 
lines to ask for provisions, and my men gave 



2 1 2 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

them a good deal out of their own scanty 
stores, until I had positively to forbid it and } 
to insist that the refugees should go to head- 
quarters ; as, however hard and merciless it 
seemed, I was in duty bound to keep my own 
regiment at the highest pitch of fighting ef- 
ficiency. 

As soon as the surrender was assured the 
refugees came streaming back in an endless 
squalid procession down the Caney road to 
Santiago. My troopers, for all their rough- 
ness and their ferocity in fight, were rather 
tender-hearted than otherwise, and they helped 
the poor creatures, especially the women and 
children, in every way, giving them food and 
even carrying the children and the burdens 
borne by the women. I saw one man, Happy 
Jack, spend the entire day in walking to and 
fro for about a quarter of a mile on both 
sides of our lines along the road, carrying the 
bundles for a series of poor old women, or 
else carrying young children. Finally the 
doctor warned us that we must not touch the 
bundles of the refugees for fear of infection, 
as disease had broken out and was rife among 
them. Accordingly I had to put a stop to 
these acts of kindness on the part of my 
men ; against which action Happy Jack re- 
spectfully but strongly protested upon the un- 



IN THE TRENCHES. 213 

expected ground that " The Almighty would 
never let a man catch a disease while he was 
doing a good action." I did not venture to 
take so advanced a theological stand. 



2 14 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



VI. 

THE RETURN HOME, 

T^WO or three days after the surrender the 
cavalry division was marched back to 
the foothills west of El Caney, and there went 
into camp, together with the artillery-. It was 
a most beautiful spot beside a stream of clear 
water, but it Vvas not healthy. In fact no 
ground in the neighborhood was healthy. For 
the tropics the climate was not bad, and I 
have no question but that a man who was 
able to take good care of himself could live 
there all the year round with comparative 
impunity ; but the case was entirely different 
with an army which was obliged to suffer 
great exposure, and to live under conditions 
which almost insured being attacked by the 
severe malarial fever of the country. My 
own men were already suffering badly from 
fever, and they got worse rather than better 
in the new camp. The same was true of the 
other regiments in the cavalry division. A 
curious feature was that the colored troops 
seemed to suffer as heavily as the white. 



THE RE TURN HOME. 2 1 5 

From week to week there were slight relative 
changes, but on the average all the six cavalry 
regiments, the Rough Riders, the white reg- 
ulars, and the colored regulars seemed to 
suffer about alike, and we were all very much 
weakened ; about as much as the regular in- 
fantry, although naturally not as much as the 
volunteer infantry. 

Yet even under such circumstances adven- 
turous spirits managed to make their way out 
to us. In the fortnight following the last 
bombardment of the city I enlisted no less 
than nine such recruits, six being from Har- 
vard, Yale, or Princeton ; and Bull, the former 
Harvard oar, who had been back to the 
States crippled after the first fight, actually 
got back to us as a stowaway on one of the 
transports, bound to share the luck of the 
regiment, even if it meant yellow fever. 

There were but twelve ambulances with 
the army, and these were quite inadequate 
for their work ; but the conditions in the 
large field hospitals were so bad, that as long 
as possible we kept all of our sick men in the 
regimental hospital at the front. Dr. Church 
did splendid work, although he himself was 
suffering much more than half the time from 
fever. Several of the men from the ranks did 
equally well, especially a young doctor from 



2 1 6 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

New York, Harry Thorpe, who had enUsted 
as a trooper, but who was now made acting 
assistant-surgeon. It was with the greatest 
difficulty that Church and Thorpe were able 
to get proper medicine for the sick, and it 
was almost the last day of our stay before we 
were able to get cots for them. Up to that 
time they lay on the ground. No food was 
issued suitable for them, or for the half-sick 
men who were not on the doctor's list ; the 
two classes by this time included the bulk of 
the command. Occasionally we got hold of 
a wagon or of some Cujpan carts, and at 
other times I used my improvised pack-train 
(the animals of which, however, were con- 
tinually being taken away from us by our 
superiors) and went or sent back to the sea- 
coast at Siboney or into Santiago itself to get 
rice, flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, condensed milk, 
potatoes, and canned vegetables. The rice I 
bought in Santiago ; the best of the other 
stuff I got from the Red Cross through Mr. 
George Kennan and Miss Clara Barton and 
Dr. Lesser ; but some of it I got from our own 
transports. Colonel Weston, the Commis- 
sary-General, as always, rendered us every 
service in his power. This additional and 
varied food was of the utmost service, not 
merely to the sick but in preventing the 



THE RE TURN HOME. 2 1 7 

well from becoming sick. Throughout the 
campaign the Division Inspector-General, 
Lieutenant-Colonel Garlington, and Lieuten- 
ants West and Dickman, the acting division 
quartermaster and commissary, had done 
everything in their power to keep us supplied 
with food ; but where there were so few mules 
and wagons even such able and zealous of- 
ficers could not do the impossible. 

We had the camp policed thoroughly, and 
I made the men build little bunks of poles to 
sleep on. By July 23d, when we had been 
ashore a month, we were able to get fresh 
meat, and from that time on we fared well ; 
but the men were already sickening. The 
chief trouble "was the malarial fever, which 
was recurrent. For a few days the man 
would be very sick indeed ; then he would 
partially recover, and be able to go back to 
work ; but after a little time he would be 
again struck down. Every officer other than 
myself except one was down with sickness at 
one time or another. Even Greenway and 
Goodrich succumbed to the fever and were 
knocked out for a few days. Very few of 
the men indeed retained their strength and 
energy, and though the percentage actually 
on the sick list never got over twenty, there 
were less than fifty per cent, who were fit for 



2i8 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

any kind of work. All the clothes were in 
rags ; even the officers had neither socks nor 
underwear. The lithe college athletes had 
lost their spring; the tall, gaunt hunters and 
cow-punchers lounged listlessly in their dog- 
tents, which were steaming morasses during the 
torrential rains, and then ovens when the sun 
blazed down ; but there were no complaints. 

Through some blunder our march from the 
intrenchments to the camp on the foothills, 
after the surrender, was made during the heat 
of the day ; and though it was only some five 
miles or thereabouts, very nearly half the men 
of the cavalry division dropped out. Captain 
Llewellen had come back, and led his troop 
on the march. He carried a pick and shovel 
for one of his sick men, and after we reached 
camp walked back with a mule to get another 
trooper who had fallen out from heat ex- 
haustion. The result was that the captain 
himself went down and became exceedingly 
sick. We at last succeeded in sending him 
to the States. I never thought he would 
live, but he did, and when I met him again 
at Montauk Point he had practically entirely 
recovered. My orderly, Henry Bardshar, was 
struck down, and though he ultimately re- 
covered, he was a mere skeleton, having lost 
over eighty pounds. 



THE RETURN HOME. 219 

Yellow fever also broke out in the rear, 
chiefly among the Cubans. It never became 
epidemic, but it caused a perfect panic among 
some of own doctors, and especially in the 
minds of one or two generals and of the home 
authorities. We found that whenever we sent 
a man to the rear he was decreed to have 
yellow fever, whereas, if we kept him at the 
front, it always turned out that he had ma- 
larial fever, and after a few days he was back 
at work again. I doubt if there were ever 
more than a dozen genuine cases of yellow 
fever in the whole cavalry division ; but the 
authorities at Washington, misled by the 
reports they received from one or two of their 
military and medical advisers at the front, be- 
came panic-struck, and under the influence 
of their fears hesitated to bring the army 
home, lest it might import yellow fever into 
the United States. Their panic was abso- 
lutely groundless, as shown by the fact that 
when brought home not a single case of yel- 
low fever developed upon American soil. 
Our real foe was not the yellow fever at all, 
but malarial fever, which was not infectious, 
but which was certain, if the troops were left 
throughout the summer in Cuba, to destroy 
them, either killing them outright, or weaken- 



2 20 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

ing them so that they would have fallen vic- 
tims to any disease that attacked them, 

However, for a time our prospects were 
gloomy, as the Washington authorities seemed 
determined that we should stay in Cuba. 
They unfortunately knew nothing of the 
country nor of the circumstances of the army, 
and the plans that were from time to time 
formulated in the Department (and even by 
an occasional general or surgeon at the front) 
for the management of the army would have 
been comic if they had not possessed such 
tragic possibilities. Thus, at one period it 
was proposed that we should shift camp every 
two or three days. Now, our transportation, 
as I have pointed out before, was utterly in- 
adequate. In theory, under the regulations 
of the War Department, each regiment should 
have had at least twenty-five wagons. As a 
matter of fact our regiment often had none, 
sometimes one, rarely two, and never three ; 
yet it was better off than any other in the 
cavalry division. In consequence it was im- 
possible to carry much of anything save what 
the men had on their backs, and half of the 
men were too weak to walk three miles with 
their packs. Whenever we shifted camp the 
exertion among the half-sick caused our sick- 
roll to double next morning, and it took at 



THE RE TURN HOME. 221 

least three days, even when the shift was for 
but a short distance, before we were able to 
bring up the officer's luggage, the hospital 
spare food, the ammunition, etc. Meanwhile 
the officers slept wherever they could, and 
those men who had not been able to carry 
their own bedding, slept as the officers did. 
In the weak condition of the men the labor 
of pitching camp was severe and told heavily 
upon them. In short, the scheme of con- 
tinually shifting camp was impossible of ful- 
filment. It would merely have resulted in 
the early destruction of the army. 

Again, it was proposed that we should go 
up the mountains and make our camps there. 
The palm and the bamboo grew to the sum- 
mits of the mountains, and the soil along their 
sides was deep and soft, while the rains were 
very heavy, much more so than immediately 
on the coast — every mile or two inland bring- 
ing with it a great increase in the rainfall. 
We could, with much difficulty, have got our 
regiments up the mountains, but not half the 
men could have got up with their belongings ; 
and once there it would have been an im- 
possibility to feed them. It was all that 
could be done, with the limited number of 
wagons and mule-trains on hand, to feed the 
men in the existing camps, for the travel and 



222 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

the rain gradually rendered each road in suc- 
cession wholly impassable. To have gone 
up the mountains would have meant early 
starvation. 

The third plan of the Department was even 
more objectionable than either of the others. 
There was, some twenty-five miles in the in- 
terior, what was called a high interior plateau, 
and at one period we were informed that we 
were to be marched. thither. As a matter of 
fact, this so-called high plateau was the sugar- 
cane country, where, during the summer, the 
rainfall was prodigious. It was a rich deep 
soil, covered with a rank tropic growth, the 
guinea-grass being higher than the head of a 
man on horseback. It was a perfect hotbed 
of malaria, and there was no dry ground what- 
ever in which to camp. To have sent the 
troops there would have been simple butchery. 

Under these circumstances the alternative 
to leaving the country altogether was to stay 
where we were, with the hope that half the 
men would live through to the cool season. 
We did ever}^thing possible to keep up the 
spirits of the men, but it was exceedingly diffi- 
cult because there was nothing for them to 
do. They were weak and languid, and in the 
wet heat they had lost energy, so that it was 
not possible for them to indulge in sports or 



THE RETURN HOME. 



223 



pastimes. There were exceptions ; but the 
average man who went off to shoot guinea- 
hens or tried some vigorous game always felt 
much the worse for his exertions. Once or 
twice I took some of my comrades with me, 
and climbed up one or another of the sur- 
rounding mountains, but the result generally 
was that half of the party were down with 
some kind of sickness next day. It was im- 
possible to take heavy exercise in the heat of 
the day ; the evening usually saw a rain-storm 
which made the country a quagmire ; and in 
the early morning the drenching dew and wet, 
slimy soil made walking but little pleasure. 
Chaplain Brown held service every Sunday 
under a low tree outside my tent ; and we al- 
ways had a congregation of a few score troop- 
ers, lying or sitting round, their strong hard 
faces turned toward the preacher. I let a few 
of the men visit Santiago, but the long walk 
in and out was very tiring, and, moreover, 
wise restrictions had been put as to either 
officers or men coming in. 

In any event there was very little to do in 
the quaint, dirty old Spanish city, though it 
was interesting to go in once or twice, and 
wander through the narrow streets with their 
curious little shops and low houses of stained 
stucco, with elaborately wrought iron trellises 



2 24 ^-^^ ROUGH RIDERS, 

to the windows, and curiously carved bal- 
conies ; or to sit in the central plaza where 
the cathedral was, and the clubs, and the Cafe 
Venus, and the low, bare, rambling building 
which was called the Governor's Palace. In 
this palace Wood had now been established 
as military governor, and Luna, and two or 
three of my other officers from the Mexican 
border, who knew Spanish, were sent in to do 
duty under him. A great many of my men 
knew Spanish, and some of the New Mexicans 
were of Spanish origin, although they behaved 
precisely like the other members of the regi- 
ment. 

We should probably have spent the summer 
in our sick camps, losing half the men and 
hopelessly shattering the health of the remain- 
der, if General Shafter had not summoned a 
council of officers, hoping by united action of 
a more or less public character to wake up 
the Washington authorities to the actual con- 
dition of things. As all the Spanish forces in 
the province of Santiago had surrendered, and 
as so-called immune regiments were coming 
to garrison the conquered territory, there was 
literally not one thing of any kind whatsoever 
for the army to do, and no purpose to serve 
by keeping it at Santiago. We did not sup- 
pose that peace was at hand, being ignorant 



THE RETURN HOME. 



225 



of the negotiations. We were anxious to take 
part in the Porto Rico campaign, and would 
have been more than willing to suffer any 
amount of sickness, if by so doing we could 
get into action. But if we were not to take 
part in the Porto Rico campaign, then we 
knew it was absolutely indispensable to get 
our commands north immediately, if they were 
to be in trim for the great campaign against 
Havana, which would surely be the main event 
of the winter if peace were not declared in 
advance. 

Our army included the great majority of 
the regulars, and was, therefore, the flower of 
the American force. It was on every account 
imperative to keep it in good trim ; and to 
keep it in Santiago meant its entirely purpose- 
less destruction. As soon as the surrender 
was an accomplished fact, the taking away of 
the army to the north should have begun. 

Every officer, from the highest to the lowest, 
especially among the regulars, realized all of 
this, and about the last day of July, General 
Shafter called a conference, in the palace, of 
all the division and brigade commanders. 
By this time, owing to Wood's having been 
made Governor-General, I was in command 
of my brigade, so I went to the conference too, 
riding in with Generals Sumner and Wheeler, 
15 



2 26 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

who were the other representatives of the 
cavalry division. Besides the Une officers all 
the chief medical officers were present at the 
conference. The telegrams from the Secretary 
stating the position of himself and the Sur- 
geon-General were read, and then almost every 
line and medical officer present expressed his 
views in turn. They were almost all regulars 
and had been brought up to life-long habits 
of obedience without protest. They were 
ready to obey still, but they felt, quite rightly, 
that it was their duty to protest rather than to 
see the flower of the United States forces des- 
troyed as the culminating act of a campaign in 
which the blunders that had been committed 
had been retrieved only by the valor and 
splendid soldierly qualities of the officers and 
enlisted men of the infantry and dismounted 
cavalry. There was not a dissenting voice ; 
for there could not be. There was but one 
side to the question. To talk of continually 
shifting camp or of moving up the mountains 
or of moving into the interior was idle, for not 
one of the plans could be carried out with our 
utterly insufficient transportation, and at that 
season and in that climate they would merely 
have resulted in aggravating the sickliness of 
the soldiers. It was deemed best to make 
some record of our opinion, in the shape of a 



THE RETURN HOME. 227 

letter or report, which would show that to keep 
the army in Santiago meant its absolute and 
objectless ruin, and that it should at once be 
recalled. At first there was naturally some 
hesitation on the part of the regular officers 
to take the initiative, for their entire future 
career might be sacrificed. So I wrote a letter 
to General Shafter, reading over the rough 
draft to the various Generals and adopting 
their corrections. Before I had finished mak- 
ing these corrections it was determined that 
we should send a circular letter on behalf of 
all of us to General Shafter, and when I re- 
turned from presenting him mine, I found this 
circular letter already prepared and we all of us 
signed it. Both letters were made public. The 
result was immediate. Within three days the 
army was ordered to be ready to sail for home. 
As soon as it was known that we were to 
sail for home the spirits of the men changed 
for the better. In my regiment the officers 
began to plan methods of drilling the men on 
horseback, so as to fit them for use against 
the Spanish cavalry, if we should go against 
Havana in December. We had, all of us, 
eyed the captured Spanish cavalry with partic- 
ular interest. The men were small, and the 
horses, though well trained and well built, 
were diminutive ponies, very much smaller 



2 28 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

than cow ponies. We were certain that if we 
ever got a chance to try shock tactics against 
them they would go down Uke nine-pins, pro- 
vided only that our men could be trained to 
charge in any kind of line, and we made up 
our minds to devote our time to this. Dis- 
mounted work with the rifle we already felt 
thoroughly competent to perform. 

My time was still much occupied with look- 
ing after the health of my brigade, but the 
fact that we were going home, where I knew 
that their health would improve, lightened my 
mind, and I was able thoroughly to enjoy the 
beauty of the countr}^ and even of the storms, 
which hitherto I had regarded purely as ene- 
mies. 

The surroundings of the city of Santiago 

are very gran4. The circling mountains rise 
sheer and high. The plains are threaded by 
rapid winding brooks and are dotted here and 
there with quaint villages, curiously pictur- 
esque from their combining traces of an out- 
worn old-world civilization with new and raw 
barbarism. The tall, graceful, feathery bam- 
boos rise by the water's edge, and elsewhere, 
even on the mountain-crests, where the soil is 
wet and rank enough ; and the splendid royal 
palms and cocoanut palms tower high above 
the matted green jungle. 



THE RE TURN HOME. 229 

Generally the thunder-storms came in the 
afternoon, but once I saw one at sunrise, 
driving down the high mountain valleys to- 
ward us. It was a very beautiful and almost 
terrible sight ; for the sun rose behind the 
storm, and shone through the gusty rifts, 
lighting the mountain-crests here and there, 
while the plain below lay shrouded in the lin- 
gering night. The angry, level rays edged 
the dark clouds with crimson, and turned the 
down-pour into sheets of golden rain ; in the 
valleys the glimmering mists were tinted every 
wild hue ; and the remotest heavens were lit 
with flaming glory. 

One day General Lawton, General Wood 
and I, with Ferguson and poor Tiffany, went 
down the bay to visit Morro Castle. The 
shores were beautiful, especially where there 
were groves of palms and of the scarlet-flower 
tree, and the castle itself, on a jutting head- 
land, overlooking the sea and guarding the 
deep, narrow entrance to the bay, showed just 
what it was, the splendid relic of a vanished 
power and a vanished age. We wandered all 
through it, among the castellated battlements, 
and in the dungeons, where we found hideous 
rusty implements of torture ; and looked at 
the guns, some modern and some very old. 
It had been little hurt by the bombardment of 



230 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



the ships. Afterward I had a swim, not 
trusting much to the shark stories. We passed 
by the sunken hulks of the Merrimac and the 
Reina Mercedes, lying just outside the main 
channel. Our own people had tried to sink 
the first and the Spaniards had tried to sink 
the second, so as to block the entrance. 
Neither attempt was successful. 

On August 6th we were ordered to embark, 
and next morning we sailed on the transport 
Miami. General Wheeler was with us and a 
squadron of the Third Cavalry under Major 
Jackson. The General put the policing and 
management of the ship into my hands, and I 
had great aid from Captain McCormick, who 
had been acting with me as adjutant-general 
of the brigade. I had profited by my experi- 
ence coming down, and as Dr. Church knew 
his work well, although he was very sick, we 
kept the ship in such good sanitary condition, 
that we were one of the very few organizations 
allowed to land at Montauk immediately upon 
our arrival. 

Soon after leaving port the captain of the 
ship notified me that his stokers and engin- 
eers were insubordinate and drunken, due, he 
thought, to liquor which my men had given 
them. I at once started a search of the ship, 
explaining to the men that they could not keep 



THE RE TURN HOME. 23 1 

the liquor ; that if they surrendered whatever 
they had to me I should return it to them 
when we went ashore ; and that meanwhile I 
would allow the sick to drink when they really 
needed it ; but that if they did not give the 
liquor to me of their own accord I would 
throw it overboard. About seventy flasks and 
bottles were handed to me, and I found and 
threw overboard about twenty. This at once 
put a stop to all drunkenness. The stokers 
and engineers were sullen and half mutinous, 
so I sent a detail of my men down to watch 
them and see that they did their work under 
the orders of the chief engineer ; and we re- 
duced them to obedience in short order. I 
could easily have drawn from the regiment 
sufficient skilled men to fill every position in 
the entire ship's crew, from captain to stoker. 
We were very much crowded on board the 
ship, but rather better off than on the Yuca- 
tan, so far as the men were concerned, which 
was the important point. All the officers ex- 
cept General Wheeler slept in a kind of im- 
provised shed, not unlike a chicken coop with 
bunks, on the aftermost part of the upper 
deck. The water was bad — some of it very 
bad. There was no ice. The canned beef 
proved practically uneatable, as we knew 
would be the case. There were not enough 



232 THE R UGH RIDERS, 

vegetables. We did not have enough disin- 
fectants, and there was no provision whatever 
for a hospital or for isolating the sick ; we 
simply put them on one portion of one deck. 
If, as so many of the high authorities had in- 
sisted, there had really been a yellow-fever 
epidemic, and if it had broken out on ship- 
board, the condition would have been fright- 
ful ; but there was no yellow-fever epidemic. 
Three of our men had been kept behind as 
suspects, all three suffering simply from mal- 
'arial fever. One of them, Lutz, a particularly 
good soldier, died ; another, who was simply 
a malingerer and had nothing the matter with 
him whatever, of course recovered ; the third 
was Tiffany who, I believe, would have lived 
had we been allowed to take him with us, but 
who was sent home later and died soon after 
landing. 

I was very anxious to keep the men amused, 
and as the quarters were so crowded that it 
was out of the question for them to have 
any physical exercise, I did not interfere with 
their playing games of chance so long as no 
disorder followed. On shore this was not 
allowed ; but in the particular emergency 
which we were meeting, the oss of a month's 
salary was as nothing compared to keeping the 
men thoroughly interested and diverted. 



THE RETURN HOME. 233 

By care and diligence we succeeded in pre- 
venting any serious sickness. One man died, 
however. He had been suffering from dysen- 
tery ever since we landed, owing purely to his 
own fault, for on the very first night ashore he 
obtained a lot of fiery liquor from some of the 
Cubans, got very drunk, and had to march 
next day through the hot sun before he was 
entirely sober. He never recovered, and was 
useless from that time on. On board ship he 
died, and we gave him sea burial. Wrapped 
in a hammock, he was placed opposite a port, 
and the American flag thrown over him. The 
engine was stilled, and the great ship rocked 
on the waves unshaken by the screw, while the 
war-worn troopers clustered around with bare 
heads, to listen to Chaplain Brown read the 
funeral service, and to the band of the Third 
Calvary as it played the funeral dirge. Then 
the port was knocked free, the flag withdrawn, 
and the shotted hammock plunged heavily over 
the side, rushing down through the dark water 
to lie, till the Judgment Day, in the ooze that 
holds the timbers of so many gallant ships, 
and the bones of so many fearless adventurers. 

We were favored by good weather during 
our nine days' voyage, and much of the time 
when there was little to do we simply sat to- 
gether and talked, each man contributing from 



234 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

the fund of his own experiences. Voyages 
around Cape Horn, yacht races for the Amer- 
ica's cup, experiences on foot-ball teams which 
are famous in the annals of college sport ; 
more serious feats of desperate prowess in 
Indian fighting and in breaking up gangs of 
white outlaws ; adventures in hunting big 
game, in breaking wild horses, in tending 
great herds of cattle, and in wandering winter 
and summer among the mountains and across 
the lonely plains — the men who told the tales 
could draw upon countless memories such as 
these of the things they had done and the 
things they had seen others do. Sometimes 
General Wheeler joined us and told us about 
the great war, compared with which ours was 
such a small war — far-reaching in their im- 
portance though its effects were destined to 
be. When we had become convinced that we 
would escape an epidemic of sickness the 
homeward voyage became very pleasant. 

On the eve of leaving Santiago I had re- 
ceived from Mr. Laffan of the Sufi^ a cable 
with the single word " Peace," and we specu- 
lated much on this, as the clumsy transport 
steamed slowly northward across the trade 
wind and then into the Gulf Stream. At last 
we sighted the low, sandy bluffs of the Long 
Island coast, and late on the afternoon of the 



THE RETURN HOME. 235 

14th we steamed through the still waters of 
the Sound and cast anchor off Montauk. A 
gun-boat of the Mosquito fleet came out to 
greet us and to inform us that peace negotia- 
tions had begun. 

Next morning we were marched on shore. 
Many of the men were very sick indeed. Of 
the three or four who had been closest to 
me among the enlisted men, Color-Sergeant 
Wright was the only one in good health. 
Henry Bardshar was a wreck, literally at 
death's door. I was myself in lirst-class 
health, all the better for having lost twfenty 
pounds. Faithful Marshall, my colored body- 
servant, was so sick as to be nearly helpless. 

Bob Wrenn nearly died. He had joined us 
very late and we could not get him a Krag 
carbine ; so I had given him my Winchester, 
which carried the government cartridge ; and 
when he was mustered out he carried it home 
in triumph, to the envy of his fellows, who 
themselves had to surrender their beloved 
rifles. 

For the first few days there was great con- 
fusion and some want even after we got to 
Montauk. The men in hospitals suffered 
from lack of almost everything, even cots. 
But after these few days we were very well 
cared for and had abundance of all we 



236 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

needed, except that on several occasions there 
was a shortage of food for the horses, which 
I should have regarded as even more serious 
than a shortage for the men, had it not been 
that we were about to be disbanded. The 
men lived high, with milk, eggs, oranges, and 
any amount of tobacco, the lack of which 
during portions of the Cuban campaign had 
been felt as seriously as any lack of food. 
One of the distressing features of the malarial 
fever which had been ravaging the troops was 
that it was recurrent and persistent. Some of 
my men died after reaching home, and many 
were very sick. We owed much to the kind- 
ness not only of the New York hospitals and 
the Red Cross and kindred societies, but of 
individuals, notably Mr. Bayard Cutting and 
Mrs. Armitage, who took many of our men to 
their beautiful Long Island homes. 

On the whole, however, the month we spent 
at Montauk before we disbanded was very 
pleasant. It was good to meet the rest of the 
regiment. They all felt dreadfully at not 
having been in Cuba. It was a sore trial to 
men who had given up much to go to the war, 
and who rebelled at nothing in the way of 
hardship or suffering, but who did bitterly 
feel the fact that their sacrifices seemed to 
have been useless. Of course those who 



THE RETURN HOME, 237 

stayed had done their duty precisely as did 
those who went, for the question of glory was 
not to be considered in comparison to the 
faithful performance of whatever was ordered ; 
and no distinction of any kind was allowed in 
the regiment between those whose good fortune 
it had been to go and those whose harder fate 
it had been to remain. Nevertheless the latter 
could not be entirely comforted. 

The regiment had three mascots ; the two 
most characteristic — a young mountain lion 
brought by the Arizona troops, and a war 
eagle brought by the New Mexicans — we had 
been forced to leave behind in Tampa. The 
third, a rather disreputable but exceedingly 
knowing little dog named Cuba, had accom- 
panied us through all the vicissitudes of the 
campaign. The mountain lion, Josephine, 
possessed an infernal temper; whereas both 
Cuba and the eagle, which have been named 
in my honor, were extremely good-humored. 
Josephine was kept tied up. She sometimes 
escaped. One cool night in early September 
she wandered off and, entering the tent of a 
Third Cavalry man, got into bed with him; 
whereupon he fled into the darkness with yells, 
much more unnerved than he would have been 
by the arrival of any number of Spaniards. 
The eagle was let loose and not only walked 



238 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

at will up and down the company streets, but 
also at times flew wherever he wished. He 
was a young bird, having been taken out of 
his nest when a fledgling. Josephine hated 
him and was always trying to make a meal of 
him, especially when we endeavored to take 
their photographs together. The eagle, though 
good-natured, was an entirely competent indi- 
vidual and ready at any moment to beat 
Josephine off. Cuba was also oppressed at 
times by Josephine, and was of course no 
match for her, but was frequently able to 
overawe by simple decision of character. 

In addition to the animal mascots, we had 
two or three small boys who had also been 
adopted by the regiment. One, from Ten- 
nessee, was named Dabney Royster. When 
we embarked at Tampa he smuggled himself 
on board the transport with a 22-calibre rifle 
and three boxes of cartridges, and wept bit- 
terly when sent ashore. The squadron which 
remained behind adopted him, got him a little 
Rough Rider's uniform, and made him practi- 
cally one of the regiment. 

The men who had remained at Tampa, 
like ourselves, had suffered much from fever, 
and the horses were in bad shape. So many 
of the men were sick that none of the regi- 
ments began to drill for some time after reacli- 



THE RETURN HOME. 239 

ing Montauk. There was a great deal of 
paper-work to be done ; but as I still had 
charge of the brigade only a little of it fell on 
my shoulders. Of this I was sincerely glad, 
for I knew as little of the paper-work as my 
men had originally known of drill. We had 
all of us learned how to fight and march ; but 
the exact limits of our rights and duties in 
other respects were not very clearly defined in 
our minds ; and as for myself, as I had not 
had the time to learn exactly what they were, 
I had assumed a large authority in giving 
rewards and punishments. In particular I 
had looked on court-martials much as Peter 
Bell looked on primroses — they were court- 
martials and nothing more, whether resting 
on the authority of a lieutenant-colonel or of 
a major-general. The mustering-out officer, 
a thorough soldier, found to his horror that I 
had used the widest discretion both in im- 
posing heavy sentences which I had no power 
to impose on men who shirked their duties, 
and, where men atoned for misconduct by 
marked gallantry, in blandly remitting sen- 
tences approved by my chief of division. 
However, I had done substantial, even though 
somewhat rude and irregular, justice — and no 
harm could result, as we were just about to 
be mustered out. 



240 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

My chief duties were to see that the camps 
of the three regiments were thoroughly- 
policed and kept in first-class sanitary con- 
dition. This took up some time, of course, 
and there were other matters in connection 
with the mustering out which had to be 
attended to ; but I could always get two or 
three hours a day free from work. Then I 
would summon a number of the officers, 
Kane, Greenway, Goodrich, Church, Ferguson, 
Mcllhenny, Frantz, Ballard, and others, and 
we would gallop down to the beach and bathe 
in the surf, or else go for long rides over tho 
beautiful rolling plains, thickly studded with 
pools which were white with water-lilies. 
Sometimes I went off alone with my orderly, 
young Gordon Johnston, one of the best men 
in the regiment ; he was a nephew of the 
Governor of Alabama, and when at Princeton 
had played on the eleven. We had plenty of 
horses, and these rides were most enjoyable. 
Galloping over the open, rolling country, 
through the cool fall evenings, made us feel 
as if we were out on the great Western plains 
and might at any moment start deer from the 
brush, or see antelope stand and gaze, far 
away, or rouse a band of mighty elk and hear 
their horns clatter as they fled. 

An old friend, Baron von Sternberg, of the 



THE RE TURN HOME. 2 4 1 

German Embassy, spent a week in camp with 
me. He had served, when only seventeen, in 
the Franco-Prussian War as a hussar, and 
was a noted sharp-shooter — being "the Uttle 
baron " who is the hero of Archibald Forbes's 
true story of " The Pig-dog." He and I had 
for years talked over the possibilities of just 
such a regiment as the one I was command- 
ing, and he was greatly interested in it. 
Indeed I had vainly sought permission from 
the German ambassador to take him with the 
regiment to Santiago. 

One Sunday before the regiment disbanded 
I supplemented Chaplain Brown's address to 
the men by a short sermon of a rather horta- 
tory character. I told them how proud I was 
of them, but warned them not to think that 
they could now go back and rest on their 
laurels, bidding them remember that though 
for ten days or so the world would be willing 
to treat them as heroes, yet after that time 
they would find they had to get down to hard 
work just like everyone else, unless they were 
willing to be regarded as worthless do-noth- 
ings. They took the sermon in good part, 
and I hope that some of them profited by it. 
At any rate, they repaid me by a very much 
more tangible expression of affection. One 

afternoon, to my genuine surprise, I was 
16 



242 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

asked out of my tent by Lieutenant-Colonel 
Brodie (the gallant old boy had rejoined us) 
and found the whole regiment formed in hol- 
low square, with the officers and color- 
sergeant in the middle. When I went in, one 
of the troopers came forward and on behalf 
of the regiment presented me with Reming- 
ton's fine bronze, " The Bronco-buster." 
There could have been no more appropriate 
gift from such a regiment, and I was not only 
pleased with it, but very deeply touched with 
the feeling which made them join in giving it. 
Afterward they all filed past and I shook the 
hands of each to say good-by. 

Most of them looked upon the bronze with 
the critical eyes of professionals. I doubt if 
there was any regiment in the world which con- 
tained so large a number of men able to ride the 
wildest and most dangerous horses. One day 
while at Montauk Point some of the troopers of 
the Third Cavalry were getting ready for mount- 
ed drill when one of their horses escaped, hav- 
ing thrown his rider. This attracted the atten- 
tion of some of our men and they strolled 
around to see the trooper remount. He was 
instantly thrown again, the horse, a huge vi- 
cious sorrel, being one of the worst buckers I 
ever saw ; and none of his comrades were 
willing to ride the animal. Our men, of course, 



THE RETURN HOME. 



243 



jeered and mocked at them, and in response 
were dared to ride the horse themselves. The 
challenge was instantly accepted, the only 
question being as to which of a dozen noted 
bronco-busters who were in the ranks should 
undertake the task. They finally settled on a 
man named Darnell. It was agreed that the 
experiment should take place next day when 
the horse would be fresh, and accordingly next 
day the majority of both regiments turned out 
on a big open flat in front of my tent — brigade 
head-quarters. The result was that, after as 
fine a bit of rough riding as one would care to 
see, in which one scarcely knew whether most 
to wonder at the extraordinary viciousness 
and agile strength of the horse or at the horse- 
manship and courage of the rider, Darnell 
came off victorious, his seat never having been 
shaken. After this almost every day we had 
exhibitions of bronco-busting, in which all the 
crack riders of the regiment vied with one an- 
other, riding not only all of our own bad horses 
I but any horse which was deemed bad in any 
of the other regiments. 

Darnell, McGinty, Wood, Smoky Moore, and 
a score of others took part in these exhibitions, 
which included not merely feats in mastering 
vicious horses, but also feats of broken horses 
which the riders had trained to lie down at 



2 44 ^^^ ROUGH RIDERS. 

command, and upon which they could mount 
while at full speed. 

Toward the end of the time we also had 
mounted drill on two or three occasions ; and 
when the President visited the camp we turned 
out mounted to receive him as did the rest of 
the cavalry. The last night before we were 
mustered out was spent in noisy, but entirely 
harmless hilarity, which I ignored. Every 
form of celebration took place in the ranks. 
A former Populist candidate for Attorney- 
General in Colorado delivered a fervent ora- 
tion in favor of free silver ; a number of the 
college boys sang ; but most of the men gave 
vent to their feelings by improvised dances. 
In these the Indians took the lead, pure bloods 
and half-breeds alike, the cowboys and miners 
cheerfully joining in and forming-part of the 
howling, grunting rings, that w^ent bounding 
around the great fires they had kindled. 

Next morning Sergeant Wright took down 
the colors, and Sergeant Guitilias the standard, 
for the last time ; the horses, the rifles, and 
the rest of the regimental property had been 
turned in ; officers and men shook hands and 
said good-by to one another, and then they 
scattered to their homes in the North and the 
South, the few going back to the great cities of 
the East, the many turning again toward the 



THE RETURN HOME, 245 

plains, the mountains, and the deserts of the 
West and the strange Southwest. This was 
on September 15 th, the day which marked the 
close of the four months' life of a regiment 
of as gallant fighters as ever wore the United 
States uniform. 

The regiment was a wholly exceptional vol- 
unteer organization, and its career cannot be 
taken as in any way a justification tor the be- 
lief that the average volunteer regiment ap- 
proaches the average regular regiment in 
point of efficiency until it has had many 
months of active service. In the first place, 
though the regular regiments may differ 
markedly among themselves, yet the range 
of variation among them is nothing like so 
wide as that among volunteer regiments, 
where at first there is no common standard at 
all ; the very best being, perhaps, up to the 
level of the regulars (as has recently been 
shown at Manila), while the very worst are 
no better than mobs, and the great bulk come 
in between.* The average regular regiment 
is superior to the average volunteer regi- 
ment in the physique of the enlisted men, 
who have been very carefully selected, who 

♦ For sound common-sense about the volunteers see Parker's 
excellent little book, " The Catlings at Santiago." 



246 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

have been trained to life in the open, and 
who know how to cook and take care of 
themselves generally. 

Now, in all these respects, and m others 
like them, the Rough Riders were the equals 
of the regulars. They were hardy, self-re- 
liant, accustomed to shift for themselves in 
the open under very adverse circumstances. 
The two all-important qualifications for a 
cavalryman, are riding and shooting — the 
modern cavalryman being so often used dis- 
mounted, as an infantryman. The average 
recruit requires a couple of years before he 
becomes proficient in horsemanship and 
marksmanship ; but my men were already 
good shots and first-class riders when they 
came into the regiment. The difference as 
regards officers and non-commissioned offi- 
cers, between regulars and volunteers, is 
usually very great ; but in my regiment 
(keeping in view the material we had to 
handle), it was easy to develop non-com- 
missioned officers out of men who had been 
round-up foremen, ranch foremen, mining 
bosses, and the like. These men were in- 
telligent and resolute ; they knew they had a 
great deal to learn, and they set to work to 
learn it ; while they were already accustomed 
to managing considerable interests, to obeying 



THE RETURN HOME. 247 

orders, and to taking care of others as well as 
themselves. 

As for the officers, the great point in our 
favor was the anxiety they showed to learn 
from those among their number who, like 
Capron, had already served in the regular 
army ; and the fact that we had chosen a reg- 
ular army man as Colonel. If a volunteer 
organization consists of good material, and is 
eager to learn, it can readily do so if it has 
one or two first-class regular officers to teach it. 
Moreover, most of our captains and lieuten- 
ants were men who had seen much of wild 
life, who were accustomed to handling and 
commanding other men, and who had usually 
already been under fire as sheriffs, marshals, 
and the like. As for the second in command, 
myself, I had served three years as captain 
in the National Guard ; I had been deputy 
sheriff in the cow country, where the position 
was not a sinecure ; I was accustomed to 
big game hunting and to work on a cow ranch, 
so that I was thoroughly familiar with the use 
both of horse and rifle, and knew how to 
handle cowboys, hunters, and miners ; finally, 
I had studied much in the literature of war, 
and especially the literature of the great 
modern wars, like our own Civil War, the 
Franco-German War, the Turco-Russian War ; 



248 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

and I was especially familiar with the deeds, 
the successes and failures alike, of the frontier 
horse riflemen who had fought at King's Moun- 
tain and the Thames, and on the Mexican 
border. Finally, and most important of all, 
officers and men alike were eager for fighting, 
and resolute to do well and behave properly, 
to encounter hardship and privation, and the 
irksome monotony of camp routine, without 
grumbling or complaining ; they had counted 
the cost before they went in, and were de- 
lighted to pay the penalties inevitably atten- 
dant upon the career of a fighting regiment ; 
and from the moment when the regim.ent be- 
gan to gather, the higher officers kept instill- 
ing into those under them the spirit of eager- 
ness for action and of stern determination to 
grasp at death rather than forfeit honor. 

The self-reliant spirit of the men was w-ell 
shown after they left the regiment. Of course, 
there were a few weaklings among them ; 
and there were others, entirely brave and 
normally self-sufficient, who, from wounds or 
fevers, were so reduced that they had to apply 
for aid — or at least, who deserved aid, even 
though they often could only be persuaded 
with the greatest difficulty to accept it. The 
widows and orphans had to be taken care of. 
There were a few light-hearted individuals, 



THE RETURN HOME. 249 

who were entirely ready to fight in time of 
war, but in time of peace felt that somebody 
ought to take care of them ; and there were 
others who, never having seen any aggrega- 
tion of buildings larger than an ordinary cow- 
tow^n, fell a victim to the fascinations of New 
York. But, as a whole, they scattered out to 
their homes on the disbandment of the re^i- 
ment ; gaunter than when they had enlisted, 
sometimes weakened by fever or wounds, but 
just as full as ever of sullen, sturdy capacity 
for self-help ; scorning to ask for aid, save 
what was entirely legitimate in the way of one 
comrade giving help to another. A number 
of the examining surgeons, at the muster-out, 
spoke to me with admiration of the contrast 
offered by our regiment to so many others, 
in the fact that our men always belittled their 
own bodily injuries and sufferings ; so that 
whereas the surgeons ordinarily had to be on 
the look-out lest a man who was not really 
disabled should claim to be so, in our case 
they had to adopt exactly the opposite atti- 
tude and guard the future interests of the 
men, by insisting upon putting upon their 
certificates of discharge whatever disease they 
had contracted or wound they had received in 
line of duty. Major J. H. Calef, who had 
more than any other one man to do with see- 



250 THE K O UGH RIDERS. 

ing to the proper discharge papers of our 
men, and who took a most generous interest 
in them, wrote me as follows : "I also wish 
to bring to your notice the fortitude displayed 
by the men of your regiment, who have come 
before me to be mustered out of service, in 
making their personal declarations as to their 
physical conditions. Men who bore on their 
faces and in their forms the traces of long 
days of illness, indicating wrecked constitu- 
tions, declared that nothing was the matter 
with them, at the same time disclaiming any 
intention of applying for a pension. It was 
exceptionally heroic.'' 

When we were mustered out, many of the 
men had lost their jobs, and were too weak to 
go to work at once, while there were helpless 
dependents of the dead to care for. Certain 
of my friends, August Belmont, Stanley and 
Richard Mortimer, Major Austin Wadsworth- 
— himself fresh from the Manila campaign — 
Belmont Tiffany, and others, gave me sums of 
money to be used for helping these men. In 
some instances, by the exercise of a good deal 
of tact and by treating the gift as a memorial 
of poor young Lieutenant Tiffany, we got the 
men to accept something ; and, of course, 
there were a number who, quite rightly, made 
no difficulty about accepting. But most of the 



THE RE TURN HOME, 2 5 1 

men would accept no help whatever. In the 
first chapter, I spoke of a lady, a teacher in 
an academy in the Indian Territory, three or 
four of whose pupils had come into my regi- 
ment, and who had sent with them a letter of 
introduction to me. When the regiment dis- 
banded, I wrote to her to ask if she could not 
use a little money among the Rough Riders, 
white, Indian, and half-breed, that she might 
personally know. I did not hear from her for 
some time, and then she wrote as follows : 

" Muscogee., Ind. Ter. 
'• December 19, 1898. 

" My Dear Colonel Roosevelt : I did 
not at once reply to your letter of September 
23d, because I waited for a time to see if there 
should be need among any of our Rough 
Riders, of the money you so kindly offered. 
Some of the boys are poor, and in one or two 
cases they seemed to me really needy, but they 
all said no. More than once I saw the tears 
come to their eyes, at thought of your care 
for them, as I told them of your letter. Did 
you hear any echoes of our Indian war-whoops 
over your election ? They were pretty loud. 
I was particularly exultant, because my father 
was a New Yorker and I was educated in New 
York, even if I was born here. So far as I 
can learn, the boys are taking up the dropped 



252 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



threads of their lives, as though they had 
never been away. Our two Rough Rider 
students, Meagher and Gihnore, are doing 
well in their college work. 

" I am sorry to tell you of the death of one 
of your most devoted troopers, Bert Holder- 
man, who was here serving on the Grand Jury. 
He was stricken with meningitis in the jury- 
room, and died after three days of delirium. 
His father, who was twice wounded, four 
times taken prisoner, and fought in thirty-two 
battles of the civil war, now old and feeble, 
survives him, and it was indeed pathetic to 
see his grief. Bert's mother, who is a Chero- 
kee, was raised in my grandfather's family. 
The words of commendation which you wrote 
upon Bert's discharge are the greatest comfort 
to his friends. They wanted you to know of 
his death, because he loved you so. 

" I am planning to entertain all the Rough 
Riders in this vicinity some evening during 
my holiday vacation. I mean to have no 
other guests, but only give them an opportu- 
nity for reminiscences. I regret that Bert's 
death makes one less. I had hoped to have 
them sooner, but our struggling young college 
salaries are necessarily small and duties 
arduous. I make a home for my widowed 
mother and an adopted Indian daughter, who 



THE RETURN HOME. 253 

is in school ; and as I do the cooking for a 
family of five, I have found it impossible to do 
many things I would like to. 

*' Pardon me for burdening you with these 
details, but I suppose I am like your boys, 
who say, ' The Colonel was always as ready 
to listen to a private as to a major-general.' 

" Wishing you and yours the very best gifts 
the season can bring, I am, 

* ' Very truly yours, 

" Alice M. Robertson." 

Is it any wonder that I loved my regiment ? 



APPENDICES. 



I 



APPENDIX A. 

[Before it was sent, this letter was read to 
and approved by every officer of the regi- 
ment who had served through the Santiago 
campaign.] 

[Copy.] 

Camp Wikoff, September lo, 1898. 

To THE Secretary of War. 

Sir : In answer to the circular issued by 
command of Major-General Shafter under 
date of September 8, 1898, containing a request 
for information by the Adjutant-General of 
September 7th, I have the honor to report as 
follows : 

I am a little in doubt whether the fact that 

on certain occasions my regiment suffered for 

food, etc., should be put down to an actual 

shortage of supplies or to general defects in the 

system of administration. Thus, when the 

regiment arrived in Tampa after a four days' 

journey by cars from its camp at San An- 
17 257 



258 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

tonio, it received no food whatever for twenty- 
four hours, and as the travel rations had been 
completely exhausted, food for several of the 
troops was purchased by their officers, who, 
of course, have not been reimbursed by the 
Government. In the same way we were short 
one or two meals at the time of embarking at 
Port Tampa on the transport ; but this I 
think was due, not to a failure in the quan- 
tity of supplies, but to the lack of system in 
embarkation. 

As with the other regiments, no informa- 
tion was given in advance what transports we 
should take, or how we should proceed to 
get aboard, nor did anyone exercise any su- 
pervision over the embarkation. Each regi- 
mental commander, so far as I know, was 
left to find out as best he could, after he was 
down at the dock, what transport had not 
been taken, and then to get his regiment 
aboard it, if he was able, before some other 
regiment got it. Our regiment was told to 
go to a certain switch, and take a train for 
Port Tampa at twelve o'clock, midnight. 
The train never came. After three hours of 
waiting we were sent to another switch, and 
finally at six o'clock in the morning got pos- 
session of some coal-cars and came down in 
them. When we reached the quay where 



APPENDIX A. 259 

the embarkation was proceeding, everything 
was in utter confusion. The quay was piled 
with stores and swarming with thousands of 
men of different regiments, besides onlookers. 
Etc. The commanding General, when we at 
[ast found him, told Colonel Wood and my- 
self that he did not know what ship we were 
to embark on, and that we must find Colonel 
Humphrey, the Quartermaster-General. Col- 
onel Humphrey was not in his office, and 
nobody knew where he was. The command- 
ers of the different regiments were busy try- 
ing to find him, while their troops waited in 
the trains, so as to discover the ships to 
which they were allotted — some of these ships 
being at the dock, and some in mid-stream. 
After a couple of hours' search. Colonel 
Wood found Colonel Humphrey and was al- 
lotted a ship. Immediately afterward I found 
that it had already been allotted to two other 
regiments. It was then coming to the dock. 
Colonel Wood boarded it in mid-stream to 
keep possession, while I double-quicked the 
men down from the cars and got there just 
ahead of the other two regiments. One of 
these regiments, I was afterward informed, 
spent the next thirty-six hours in cars in con- 
sequence. We suffered nothing beyond the 
loss of a couple of meals, which, it seems 



2 6 o THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

to me, can hardly be put down to any failure 
in the quantity of supplies furnished to the 
troops. 

We were two weeks on the troop-ship 
Yucatan, and as we were given twelve days' 
travel rations, we of course fell short toward 
the end of the trip, but eked things out with 
some of our field rations and troop stuff. 
The quality of the travel rations given to us 
was good, except in the important item of 
meat. The canned roast beef is worse than a 
failure as part of the rations, for in effect it 
amounts to reducing the rations by just so 
much, as a great majority of the men find it 
uneatable. It was coarse, stringy, tasteless, 
and very disagreeable in appearance, and so 
unpalatable that the effort to eat it made 
some of the men sick. Most of the men pre- 
ferred to be hungry rather than eat it. If 
cooked in a stew with plenty of onions and 
potatoes — i.e., if only one ingredient in a dish 
with other more savory ingredients — it could, 
be eaten, especially if well salted and pep- 
pered ; but, as usual (what I regard as a great 
mistake), no salt was issued with the travel 
rations, and of course no potatoes and onions. 
There were no cooking facilities on the tran- 
sport. When the men obtained any, it was 
by bribing the cook. Toward the last, when 



APPENDIX A. 261 

they began to draw on the field rations, they 
had to eat the bacon raw. On the return 
trip the same difficulty in rations obtained — 
/>., the rations were short because the men 
could not eat the canned roast beef, and had 
no salt. We purchased of the ship's supplies 
some flour and pork and a little rice for the 
men, so as to relieve the shortage as much as 
possible, and individual sick men were helped 
from private sources by officers, who them- 
selves ate what they had purchased in San- 
tiago. As nine-tenths of the men were more 
or less sick, the unattractiveness of the travel 
rations was doubly unfortunate. It would 
have been an excellent thing for their health 
if we could have had onions and potatoes, 
and means for cooking them. Moreover, the 
water was very bad, and sometimes a cask 
was struck that was positively undrinkable. 
The lack of ice for the weak and sickly men 
was very much felt. Fortunately there was 
no epidemic, for there was not a place on 
the ship where patients could have been iso- 
lated. 

During the month following the landing of 
the army in Cuba the food-supplies were gen- 
erally short in quantity, and in quality were 
never such as were best suited to men under- 
going severe hardships and great exposure in 



263 THE R O UGH RIDERS. 

an unhealthy tropical climate. The rations 
were, I understand, the same as those used in 
the Klondike. In this connection, I call 
especial attention to the report of Captain 
Brown, made by my orders when I was Bri- 
gade-Commander, and herewith appended. I 
also call attention to the report of my own 
Quartermaster. Usually we received full ra- 
tions of bacon and hardtack. The hardtack, 
however, was often mouldy, so that parts of 
cases, and even whole cases, could not be 
used. The bacon was usually good. But 
bacon and hardtack make poor food for men 
toiling and fighting in trenches under the midr 
summer sun of the tropics. The ration of 
coffee was often short, and that of sugar gener- 
ally so ; we rarely got any vegetables. Under 
these circumstances the men lost strength 
steadily, and as the fever speedily attacked 
them, they suffered from being reduced to a 
bacon and hardtack diet. So much did the 
shortage of proper food tell upon their health 
that again and again officers were compelled 
to draw upon their private purses, or upon 
the Red Cross Society, to make good the de- 
ficiency of the Government supply. Agam 
and again we sent down improvised pack- 
trains composed of officers' horses, of captured 
Spanish cavalry ponies, or of mules which 



APPENDIX A. 263 

had been shot or abandoned but were cured 
by our men. These expeditions — sometimes 
under the Chaplain, sometimes under the 
Quartermaster, sometimes under myself, and 
occasionally under a trooper — would go to 
the sea-coast or to the Red Cross head-quar- 
ters, or, after the surrender, into the city of 
Santiago, to get food both for the well and 
the sick. The Red Cross Society rendered 
invaluable aid. For example, on one of these 
expeditions I personally brought up 600 
pounds of beans ; on another occasion I per- 
sonally brought up 500 pounds of rice, 800 
pounds of cornmeal, 200 pounds of sugar, 100 
pounds of tea, 100 pounds of oatmeal, 5 
barrels of potatoes, and two of onions, with 
cases of canned soup and condensed milk for 
the sick in hospitals. Every scrap of the food 
thus brought up was eaten with avidity by the 
soldiers, and put new heart and strength into 
them. It was only our constant care of the 
men in this way that enabled us to keep them 
in any trim at all. As for the sick in the 
hospital, unless we were able from outside 
sources to get them such simple delicacies as 
rice and condensed milk, they usually had the 
alternative of eating salt pork and hardtack 
or going without. After each fight we got a 
good deal of food from the Spanish camps 



264 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

in the way of beans, peas, and rice, together 
with green coffee, all of which the men used 
and relished greatly. In some respects the 
Spanish rations were preferable to ours, no- 
tably in the use of rice. After we had been 
ashore a month the supplies began to come 
in in abundance, and we then fared very well. 
Up to that time the men were under-fed, dur- 
ing the very weeks when the heaviest drain 
was being made upon their vitality, and the 
deficiency was only partially supplied through 
the aid of the Red Cross, and out of the 
officers' pockets and the pockets of various 
New York friends who sent us money. 
Before, during, and immediately after the 
fights of June 24th and July ist, we were very 
short of even the bacon and hardtack. About 
July 14th, when the heavy rains interrupted 
communication, we were threatened with fam- 
ine, as we were informed that there was not a 
day's supply of provisions in advance nearer 
than the sea-coast ; and another twenty-four 
hours' rain would have resulted in a complete 
break-down of communications, so that for 
several days we should have been reduced to 
a diet of mule-meat and mangos. At this 
time, in anticipation of such a contingency, 
by foraging and hoarding we got a little ahead, 
so that when our supplies were cut down for 



APPENDIX A, 265 

a day or two we did not suffer much, and 
were even able to furnish a little aid to the 
less fortunate First Illinois Regiment, which 
was camped next to us. Members of the Illi- 
nois Regiment were offering our men %\ 
apiece for hardtacks. 

I wish to bear testimony to the energy and 
capacity of Colonel Weston, the Commissary- 
General with the expedition. If it had not 
been for his active aid, we should have fared 
worse than we did. All that he could do for 
us, he most cheerfully did. 

As regards the clothing, I have to say : As 
to the first issue, the blue shirts were excellent 
of their kind, but altogether too hot for Cuba. 
They are just what I used to wear in Montana. 
The leggings were good ; the shoes were very 
good ; the undershirts not very good, and the 
drawers bad — being of heavy, thick canton 
flannel, difficult to wash, and entirely unfit for 
a tropical climate. The trousers were poor, 
wearing badly. We did not get any other 
clothing until we were just about to leave 
Cuba, by which time most of the men were in 
tatters ; some being actually barefooted, while 
others were in rags, or dressed partly in clothes 
captured from the Spaniards, who were much 
more suitably clothed for the climate and place 
than we were. The ponchos were poor, being 



2 66 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

inferior to the Spanish rain-coats which we 
captured. 

As to the medical matters, I invite your 
attention, not only to the report of Dr. Church 
accompanying this letter, but to the letters of 
Captain Llewellen, Captain Day, and Lieuten- 
ant Mcllhenny. I could readily produce a 
hundred letters on the lines of the last three. 
In actual medical supplies, we had plenty of 
quinine and cathartics. We were apt to be 
short on other medicines, and we had nothing 
whatever in the way of proper nourishing food 
for our sick and wounded men during most of 
the time, except what we were able to get 
from the Red Cross or purchase with our own 
money. We had no hospital tent at all until 
I was able to get a couple of tarpaulins. Dur- 
ing much of the time my own fly was used for 
the purpose. W^e had no cots until by indivi- 
dual effort we obtained a few, only three or 
four days before we left Cuba. During most 
of the time the sick men lay on the muddy 
ground in blankets, if they had any ; if not, 
they lay without them until some of the well 
men cut their own blankets in hali Our reg- 
imental surgeon very soon left us, and Dr. 
Church, who was repeatedly taken down with 
the fever, was left alone — save as he was helped 
by men detailed from among the troopers. 



APPENDIX A. 267 

Both he and the men thus detailed, together 
with the regular hospital attendants, did work 
of incalculable service. We had no ambu- 
lance with the regiment. On the battlefield 
our wounded were generally sent to the rear 
in mule-wagons, or on litters which were im- 
provised. At other times we would hire the 
little springless Cuban carts. But of course 
the wounded suffered greatly in such convey- 
ances, and moreover, often we could not get 
a wheeled vehicle of any kind to transport 
even the most serious cases. On the day of 
the big fight, July ist, as far as we could find 
out, there were but two ambulances with the 
army in condition to work — neither of which 
did we ever see. Later there were, as we 
were informed, thirteen all told ; and occasion- 
ally after the surrender, by vigorous repre- 
sentations and requests, we would get one as- 
signed to take some peculiarly bad cases to 
the hospital. Ordinarily, however, we had to 
do with one of the makeshifts enumerated 
above. On several occasions I visited the 
big hospitals in the rear. Their condition 
was frightful beyond description from lack of 
supplies, lack of medicine, lack of doctors, 
nurses, and attendants, and especially from 
lack of transportation. The wounded and sick 
who were sent back suffered so much that, 



268 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

whenever possible, they returned to the front. 
Finally my brigade commander, General Wood, 
ordered, with my hearty acquiescence, that only 
in the direst need should any men be sent to 
the rear — no matter what our hospital accom- 
modations at the front might be. The men 
themselves preferred to suffer almost anything 
lying alone in their little shelter-tents, rather 
than go back to the hospitals in the rear. I 
invite attention to the accompanying letter of 
Captain Llewellen in relation to the dreadful 
condition of the wounded on some of the 
transports taking them North. 

The greatest trouble we had was with the 
lack of transportation. Under the order 
issued by direction of General Miles through 
the Adjutant-General on or about May 8th, a 
regiment serving as infantry in the field was 
entitled to twenty-five wagons. We often had 
one, often none, sometimes two, and never 
as many as three. We had a regimental 
pack-train, but it was left behind at Tampa. 
During most of the time our means of trans- 
portation were chiefly the improvised pack- 
trains spoken of above ; but as the mules got 
well they were taken away from us, and so were 
the captured Spanish cavalry horses. When- 
ever we shifted camp, we had to leave most of 
our things behind, so that the night before 



APPENDIX A. 269 

each fight was marked by our sleeping with- 
out tentage and with very little food, so far as 
officers were concerned, as everything had 
to be sacrificed to getting up what ammuni- 
tion and medical supplies we had. Colonel 
Wood seized some mules, and in this manner 
got up the medical supplies before the fight 
of June 24th, when for three days the officers 
had nothing but what they wore. There was 
a repetition of this, only in worse form, be- 
fore and after the fight of July ist. Of course 
much of this was simply a natural incident 
of war, but a great deal could readily have 
been avoided if we had had enough trans- 
portation ; and I was sorry not to let my men 
be as comfortable as possible and rest as 
much as possible just before going into a 
fight when, as on July ist and 2d, they might 
have to be forty-eight hours with the minimum 
quantity of food and sleep. The fever began 
to make heavy ravages among our men just 
before the surrender, and from that time on it 
became a most serious matter to shift camp, 
with sick and ailing soldiers, hardly able to 
walk — not to speak of carrying heavy burdens 
— when we had no transportation. Not more 
than half of the men could carry their rolls, 
and yet these, with the officers' baggage and 
provisions, the entire hospital and its appurte- 



270 THE ROUGH RIDERS, 

nances, etc., had to be transported somehow. 
It was usually about three days after we 
reached a new camp before the necessaries 
which had been left behind could be brought 
up, and during these three days we had to get 
along as best we could. The entire lack of 
transportation at first resulted in leaving most 
of the troop mess-kits on the beach, and we 
were never able to get them. The men cooked 
in the few utensils they could themselves 
carry. This rendered it impossible to boil 
the drinking water. Closely allied to the lack 
of transportation was the lack of means to 
land supplies from the transports. 

In my opinion, the deficiency in transport- 
ation was the worst evil with which we had to 
contend, serious though some of the others 
were. I have never served before, so have no 
means of comparing this with previous cam- 
paigns. I was often told by officers who had 
seen service against the Indians that, relatively 
to the size of the army, and the character of 
the country, we had only a small fraction of 
the transportation always used in the Indian 
campaigns. As far as my regiment was con- 
cerned, we certainly did not have one-third of 
the amount absolutely necessar}% if it was to 
be kept in fair condition, and we had to par- 
tially make good the deficiency by the most 



APPENDIX A. 271 

energetic resort to all kinds of makeshifts and 
expedients. 

Yours respectfully, 
(Signed) Theodore Roosevelt, 
Colonel First United States Cavalry, 
Forwarded through military channels. 
(5 enclosures.) 

First Endorsement. 

Head-quarters Fifth Army Corps. 
Camp Wikoff, September 18, 1898. 
Respectfully forwarded to the Adjutant- 
General of the army. 

(Signed) William R. Shafter, 

Major- General Com?nandi?ig, 



APPENDIX B. 

[The following is the report of the Associ- 
ated Press correspondent of the " round-robin " 
incident. It is literally true in every detail. I 
was present w^hen he was handed both letters ; 
he was present while they were being wTitten.] 

Santiago de Cuba, August 3d (delayed in 
transmission). — Summoned by Major-General 
Shafter, a meeting was held here this morning 
at head-quarters, and in the presence of every 
commanding and medical officer of the Fifth 
Army Corps, General Shafter read a cable 
message from Secretary Alger, ordering him, 
on the recommendation of Surgeon-General 
Sternberg, to move the army into the interior, 
to San Luis, where it is healthier. 

As the result of the conference General 
Shafter will insist upon the immediate with- 
drawal of the army North. 

As an explanation of the situation the fol- 
lowing letter from Colonel Theodore Roose- 
velt, commanding the First Cavalry, to Gen- 
272 



APPENDIX B. 273 

eral Shafter, was handed by the latter to the 
correspondent of The Associated Press for 
k pubHcation : 

Major-General Shafter. 

Sir : In a meeting of the general and 
medical officers called by you at the Palace 
this morning we were all, as you know, unan- 
imous in our views of what should be done 
with the army. To keep us here in the 
opinion of every officer commanding a divi- 
sion or a brigade, will simply involve the de- 
struction of thousands. There is no possible 
reason for not shipping practically the entire 
command North at once. 

Yellow-fever cases are very few in the 
cavalry division, where I command one of the 
two brigades, and not one true case of yellow 
fever has occurred in this division, except 
among the men sent to the hospital at Sib- 
oney, where they have, I believe, contracted it. 

But in this division there have been 1,500 
cases of malarial fever. Hardly a man has 
yet died from it, but the whole command is 
so weakened and shattered as to be ripe for 
dying like rotten sheep, when a real yellow- 
fever epidemic instead of a fake epimedic, 
like the present one, strikes us, as it is bound 
to do if we stay here at the height of the 



274 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

sickness season, August and the beginning 
of September. Quarantine against malarial 
fever is much like quarantining against the 
toothache. 

All of us are certain that as soon as the 
authorities at Washington fully appreciate the 
condition of the army, we shall be sent home. 
If we are kept here it will in all human pos- 
sibility mean an appalling disaster, for the 
surgeons here estimate that over half the army, 
if kept here during the sickly season, will die. 

This is not only terrible from the stand- 
point of the individual lives lost, but it means 
ruin from the standpoint of military efficiency 
of the flower of the American army, for the 
great bulk of the regulars are here with you. 
The sick list, large though it is, exceeding 
four thousand, affords but a faint index of the 
debilitation of the army. Not twenty per 
cent, are fit for active work. 

Six weeks on the North Maine coast, for 
instance, or elsewhere where the yellow-fever 
germ cannot possibly propagate, would make 
us all as fit as fighting-cocks, as able as we 
are eager to take a leading part in the great 
campaign against Havana in the fall, even if 
we are not allowed to try Porto Rico. 

We can be moved North, if moved at once, 
with absolute safety to the country, although, 



APPENDIX B. 275 

of course, it would have been infinitely better 
if we had been moved North or to Porto Rico 
two weeks ago. If there were any object in 
keeping us here, we would face yellow fever 
with as much indifference as we faced bullets. 
But there is no object. 

The four immune regiments ordered here 
are sufficient to garrison the city and sur- 
rounding towns, and there is absolutely noth- 
ing for us to do here, and there has not been 
since the city surrendered. It is impossible 
to move into the interior. Every shifting of 
camp doubles the sick-rate in our present 
weakened condition, and, anyhow, the interior 
is rather worse than the coast, as I have 
found by actual reconnoissance. Our present 
camps are as healthy as any camps at this end 
of the island can be. 

I Avrite only because I cannot see our men, 
who have fought so bravely and who have 
endured extreme hardship and danger so 
uncomplainingly, go to destruction without 
striving so far as lies in me to avert a doom 
as fearful as it is unnecessary and undeserved. 
Yours respectfully, 

Theodore Roosevelt, 
Colonel Commanding Secofid Cavalry B7'igade. 

After Colonel Roosevelt had taken the 



276 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

initiative, all the American general officers 
united in a " round robin " addressed to 
General Shafter. It reads : 

We, the undersigned officers commanding 
the various brigades, divisions, etc., of the 
Army of Occupation in Cuba, are of the un- 
animous opinion that this army should be at 
once taken out of the island of Cuba and sent 
to some point on the Northern sea-coast of 
the United States ; that can be done without 
danger to the people of the United States ; 
that yellow fever in the army at present is 
not epidemic ; that there are only a few 
sporadic cases ; but that the army is disabled 
by malarial fever to the extent that its effi- 
ciency is destroyed, and that it is in a condition 
to be practically entirely destroyed by an 
epidemic of yellow fever, which is sure to 
come in the near future. 

We know from the reports of competent 
officers and from personal observations that 
the army is unable to move into the interior, 
and that there are no facilities for such a 
move if attempted, and that it could not be 
attempted until too late. Moreover, the best 
medical authorities of the island say that with 
our present equipment we could not live in 
the interior during the rainy season without 



APPENDIX B. 277 

losses from malarial fever, which is almost as 
deadly as yellow fever. 

This army must be moved at once, or perish. 
As the army can be safely moved now, the 
persons responsible for preventing such a move 
will be responsible for the unnecessary loss 
of many thousands of lives. 

Our opinions are the result of careful per- 
gonal observation, and they are also based on 
the unanimous opinion of our medical officers 
with the army, who understand the situation 
absolutely. 

J. Ford Kent, 

Major-General Volunteers Cotntnanding First Division, 
Fifth Corps. 

J. C. Bates, 

Major-General Volunteers Commanding Provisional 
Division. 

Adnah R. Chaffee, 

Maj'or-General Comtnanding Third Brigade, Second 
Division. 

Samuel S. Summer, 

Brigadier-General Volunteers Commanding First Brig- 
ade, Cavalry. 

Will Ludlow, 

Brigadier-General Volunteers Commanding First Brig' 
ade. Second Division. 

Adelbert Ames, 

Brigadier-General Volunteers Commanding Third 
Brigade, First Division. 

Leonard Wood, 

Brigadier-Gefteral Volunteers Commanding the City of 
Santiago. 

Theodore Roosevelt, 

Colonel Commanding Secotid Cavalry Brigade. 



278 THE R UGH RIDERS, 

Major M. W. Wood, the chief Surgeon of 
the First Division, said : " The army must be 
moved North," adding, with emphasis, " or it 
will be unable to move itself." 

General Ames has sent the following cable 
message to Washington : 

Charles H. Allen, Assistant Secretary of the 
Navy : 
This army is incapable, because of sickness, 
of marching anywhere except to the transports. 
If it is ever to return to the United States it 
must do so at once. 



APPENDIX C. 

CORRECTIONS. 

It has been suggested to me that when 
Bucky O'Neill spoke of the vultures tearing 
our dead, he was thinking of no modern poet, 
but of the words of the prophet Ezekiel : 
" Speak unto every feathered fowl ... ye 
shall eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the 
blood of the princes of the earth." 

At San Juan the Sixth Cavalry was under 
Major Lebo, a tried and gallant officer. I 
learn from a letter of Lieutenant McNamee 
that it was he, and not Lieutenant Hartwick, 
by whose orders the troopers of the Ninth 
cast down the fence to enable me to ride my 
horse into the lane. But one of the two lieu- 
tenants of B troop was overcome by the heat 
that day ; Lieutenant Rynning was with his 
troop until dark. 

One night during the siege, when we were 

digging trenches, a curious stampede occurred 

(not in my own regiment) which it may be 

necessary some time to relate. 

279 



28 o THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

Lieutenants W. E. Shipp and W. H. Smith 
were killed, not far from each other, while 
gallantly leading their troops on the slope of 
Kettle Hill. Each left a widow and young 
children. 

Captain (now Colonel) A. L. Mills, the 
Brigade Adjutant-General, has written me 
some comments on my account of the fight on 
July I St. It was he himself who first brought 
me word to advance. I then met Colonel 
Dorst — who bore the same message — as I was 
getting the regiment forward. Captain Mills 
was one of the officers I had sent back to get 
orders that would permit me to advance ; he 
met General Sumner, who gave him the orders, 
and he then returned to me. In a letter to 
me Colonel Mills says in part : 

I reached the head of the regiment as you 
came out of the lane and gave you the orders 
to enter the action. These were that you were 
to move, with your right resting along the 
wire fence of the lane, to the support of the 
regular cavalry then attacking the hill we 
were facing. " The red-roofed house yonder 
is your objective," I said to you. You moved 
out at once and quickly forged to the front of 
your regiment. I rode in rear, keeping the 
soldiers and troops closed and in line as well 



APPENDIX C. 281 

as the circumstances and conditions permitted. 
We had covered, I judge, from one-half to two- 
thirds the distance to Kettle Hill when Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Garlington, from our left flank, 
called to me that troops were needed in the 
meadow across the lane. I put one troop 
(not three, as stated in your account *) across 
the lane and went with it. Advancing with 
the troop, I began immediately to pick up 
troopers of the Ninth Cavalry who had drifted 
from their commands, and soon had so many 
they demanded nearly all my attention. With 
a line thus made up, the colored troopers on 
the left and yours on the right, the portion of 
Kettle Hill on the right of the red-roofed 
house was first carried. I very shortly there- 
after had a strong firing-line established on 
the crest nearest the enemy, from the corner 
of the fence around the house to the low 
ground on the right of the hill, which fired 
into the strong line of conical straw hats, 
whose brims showed just above the edge of 
the Spanish trench directly west of that part 
of the hilLf These hats made a fine target ! 
I had placed a young officer of your regiment 
in charge of the portion of the line on top of 

* The other two must have followed on their owii initiative. 

t These were the Spaniards in the trenches we carried when we 
charged from Kettle Hill, after the infantry had taken the San Juan 
block-house. 



282 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

the hill, and was about to go to the left to 
keep the connection of the brigade — Captain 
McBlain, Ninth Cavalry, just then came up 
on the hill from the left and rear — when the 
shot struck that put me out of the fight. 

There were many wholly erroneous accounts 
of the Guasimas fight published at the time, 
for the most part written by newspaper-men 
who were in the rear and utterly ignorant of 
what really occurred. Most of these accounts 
possess a value so purely ephemeral as to need 
no notice. Mr. Stephen Bonsai, however, in 
his book, " The Fight for Santiago," has cast 
one of them in a more permanent form ; and 
I shall discuss one or two of his statements. 

Mr. Bonsai was not present at the fight, 
and, indeed, so far as I know, he never at any 
time was with the cavalry in action. He puts 
in his book a map of the supposed skirmish 
ground ; but it bears to the actual scene of the 
fight only the well-known likeness borne by 
Monmouth to Macedon. There was a brook 
on the battle-ground, and there is a brook in 
Mr. Bonsai's map. The real brook, flowing 
down from the mountains, crossed the valley 
road and ran down between it and the hill- 
trail, going nowhere near the latter. The 
Bonsai brook flows at right angles to the course 



APPENDIX C. 283 

of the real brook and crosses both trails — that 
is, it runs up hill. It is difficult to believe 
that the Bonsai map could have been made 
by any man who had gone over the hill-trail 
followed by the Rough Riders and who knew 
where the fighting had taken place. The posi 
tion of the Spanish line on the Bonsai map is 
inverted compared to what it really was. 

On page 90 Mr. Bonsai says that in making 
the " precipitate advance " there was a rivalry 
between the regulars and Rough Riders, which 
resulted in each hurrying recklessly forward 
to strike the Spaniards first. On the contrary 
the official reports show that General Young's 
column waited for some time after it got to 
the Spanish position, so as to allow the Rough 
Riders (who had the more difficult trail) to 
come up. Colonel Wood kept his column 
walking at a smart pace, merely so that the 
regulars might not be left unsupported when 
the fight began ; and as a matter of fact, it 
began almost simultaneously on both wings. 

On page 91 Mr. Bonsai speaks of "The 
foolhardy formation of a solid column along a 
narrow trail, which brought them (the Rough 
Riders) . . . within point-blank range of the 
Spanish rifles and within the unobstructed 
sweep of their machine-guns." He also 
speaks as if the advance should have been 



284 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

made with the regiment deployed through the 
jmigle. Of course, the only possible way by 
which the Rough Riders could have been 
brought into action in time to support the reg- 
ulars was by advancing in column along the 
trail at a good smart gait. As soon as our 
advance-guard came into contact with the 
enemy's outpost we deployed. No firing be- 
gan for at least five minutes after Captain 
Capron sent back word that he had come 
upon the Spanish outpost. At the particular 
point where this occurred there w^as a dip in 
the road, which probably rendered it, in Ca- 
pron's opinion, better to keep part of his men 
in it. In any event, Captain Capron, who 
was as skilful as he was gallant, had ample 
time between discovering the Spanish outpost 
and the outbreak of the firing to arrange his 
troop in the formation he deemed best. His 
troop was not in solid formation ; his men were 
about ten yards apart. Of course, to have 
walked forward deployed through the jungle 
prior to reaching the ground where we were 
to fight, would have been a course of pro- 
cedure so foolish as to warrant the summary 
court-martial of any man directing it. We 
could not have made half a mile an hour in 
such a formation, and would have been at 
least four hours too late for the fighting. 



APPENDIX C. 285 

On page 92 Mr. Bonsai says that Captain 
Capron's troop was ambushed, and that it re- 
ceived the enemy's fire a quarter of an hour 
before it was expected. This is simply not 
so. Before the column stopped we had 
passed a dead Cuban, killed in the preceding 
day's skirmish, and General Wood had notified 
me on information he had received from Ca- 
pron that we might come into contact with 
the Spaniards at any moment, and, as I have 
already said, Captain Capron discovered the 
Spanish outpost, and we halted and partially 
deployed the column before the firing began. 
We were at the time exactly where we had 
expected to come across the Spaniards. Mr. 
Bonsai, after speaking of L Troop, adds : 
" The remaining troops of the regiment had 
travelled more leisurely, and more than half 
an hour elapsed before they came up to Ca- 
pron's support." As a matter of fact, all the 
troops travelled at exactly the same rate of 
speed, although there were stragglers from 
each, and when Capron halted and sent back 
word that he had come upon the Spanish out- 
post, the entire regiment closed up, halted, 
and most of the men sat down. We then, 
some minutes after the first word had been 
received, and before any firing had begun, re- 
ceived instructions to deploy. I had my right 



286 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

wing partially deployed before the first shots 
between the outposts took place. Within less 
than three minutes I had G Troop, with Lle- 
wellen, Greenway, and Leahy, and one platoon 
of K Troop under Kane, on the firing-line, 
and it was not until after we reached the fir- 
ing-line that the heavy volley-firing from the 
Spaniards began. 

On page 94 Mr. Bonsai says : " A vexa- 
tious delay occurred before the two indepen- 
dent columns could communicate and advance 
with concerted action. . . . When the two 
columns were brought into communication it 
was immediately decided to make a general 
attack upon the Spanish position. . . . With 
this purpose in view, the following disposition 
of the troops was made before the advance of 
the brigade all along the line was ordered." 
There was no communication between the 
two columns prior to the general attack, nor 
was any order issued for the advance of the 
brigade all along the line. The attacks were 
made wholly independently, and the first com- 
munication between the columns was when 
the right wing of the Rough Riders in the 
course of their advance by their firing dis- 
lodged the Spaniards from the hill across the 
ravine to the right, and then saw the regulars 
come up that hill. 



APPENDIX C. 287 

Mr. Bonsai's account of what occurred 
among the regulars parallels his account of 
what occurred among the Rough Riders. 
He states that the squadron of the Tenth 
Cavalry delivered the main attack upon the 
hill, which was the strongest point of the 
Spanish position ; and he says of the troopers 
of the Tenth Cavalry that " their better train- 
ing enabled them to render more valuable 
service than the other troops engaged." In 
reality, the Tenth Cavalrymen were deployed 
in support of the First, though they mingled 
with them in the assault proper ; and so far 
as there was any difference at all in the 
amount of work done, it was in favor of the 
First. The statement that the Tenth Cavalry 
was better trained than the First, and rend- 
ered more valuable service, has not the 
slightest basis whatsoever of any kind, sort, 
or description, in fact. The Tenth Cavalry 
did well what it was required to do ; as an 
organization, in this fight, it was rather less 
heavily engaged, and suffered less loss, act- 
ually and relatively, than either the First 
Cavalry or the Rough Riders. It took about 
the same part that was taken by the left wing 
of the Rough Riders, which wing was simi- 
larly rather less heavily engaged than the right 
and centre of the regiment. Of course, this 



288 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

is a reflection neither on the Tenth Cavalry ' 
nor on the left wing of the Rough Riders. 
Each body simply did what it was ordered to 
do, and did it well. But to claim that the 
Tenth Cavalry did better than the First, or 
bore the most prominent part in the fight, is 
like making the same claim for the left wing 
of the Rough Riders. All the troops en- 
gaged did well, and all alike are entitled to 
share in the honor of the day. 

Mr. Bonsai out-Spaniards the Spaniards 
themselves as regards both their numbers and 
their loss. These points are discussed else- 
where. He develops for the Spanish side, to 
account for their retreat, a wholly new ex- 
planation — viz., that they retreated because 
they saw reinforcements arriving for the 
Americans. The Spaniards themselves make 
no such claim. Lieutenant Tejeiro asserts 
that they retreated because news had come 
of a (wholly mythical) American advance on 
Morro Castle. The Spanish official report 
simply says that the Americans were repulsed ; 
which is about as accurate a statement as 
the other two. All three explanations, those 
by General Rubin, by Lieutenant Tejeiro, 
and by Mr. Bonsai alike, are precisely on a 
par with the first Spanish official report of 
the battle of Manila Bay, in which Admiral 



APPENDIX a 289 

Dewey was described as having been repulsed 
and forced to retire. 

There are one or two minor mistakes made 
by Mr. Bonsai. He states that on the roster 
of the officers of the Rough Riders there 
were ten West Pointers. There were three, 
one of whom resigned. Only two were in the 
fighting. He also states that after Las 
Guasimas Brigadier General Young was made 
a Major-General and Colonel Wood a Briga- 
dier-General, while the commanding officers 
of the First and Tenth Cavalry were ignored 
in this " shower of promotion." In the first 
place, the commanding officers of the First 
and Tenth Cavalry were not in the fight — 
only one squadron of each having been pres- 
ent. In the next place, there was no 
" shower of promotions " at all. Nobody was 
promoted except General Young, save to fill 
the vacancies caused by death or by the pro- 
motion of General Young. Wood was not 
promoted because of this fight. General 
Young most deservedly was promoted. Soon 
after the fight he fell sick. The command of 
the brigade then fell upon Wood, simply be- 
cause he had higher rank than the other two 
regimental commanders of the brigade ; and 
I then took command of the regiment exactly 
as Lieutenant-Colonels Viele and Baldwin 



290 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

had already taken command of the First and 
Tenth Cavalry when their superior officers 
were put in charge of brigades. After the 
San Juan fighting, in which Wood commanded 
a brigade, he was made a Brigadier- General 
and I was then promoted to the nominal com- 
mand of the regiment, which I was already 
commanding in reality. 

Mr. Bonsai's claim of superior efficiency 
for the colored regular regiments as com- 
pared with the white regular regiments does 
not merit discussion. He asserts that Gen- 
eral Wheeler brought on the Guasimas fight 
in defiance of orders. Lieutenant Miley, in 
his book, " In Cuba with Shafter," on page 
^iT^^ shows that General Wheeler made his fight 
before receiving the order which it is claimed 
he disobeyed. General Wheeler was in com- 
mand ashore ; he was told to get in touch 
with the enemy, and, being a man with the 
*' fighting edge," this meant that he was cer- 
tain to fight. No general who was worth his 
salt would have failed to fight under such con- 
ditions ; the only question would be as to how 
the fight was to be made. War means fighting ; 
and the soldier's cardinal sin is timidity. 

General Wheeler remained throughout 
steadfast against any retreat from before San- 
tiago. But the merit of keeping the army be- 



APPENDIX a 291 

fore Santiago, without withdrawal, until the 
city fell, belongs to the authorities at Washing- 
ton, who at this all-important stage of the 
operations showed to marked advantage in 
overruling the proposals made by the highest 
generals in the field looking toward partial 
retreat or toward the abandonment of the 
effort to take the city. 

The following note, written by Sergeant 
E. G. Norton, of B Troop, refers to the death 
of his brother, Oliver B. Norton, one of the 
most gallant and soldierly men in the regi- 
ment : 

On July ist I, together with Sergeant Camp- 
bell and Troopers Bardsharand Dudley Dean 
and my brother who was killed and some 
others, was at the front of the column right 
behind you. We moved forward, following 
you as you rode, to where we came upon the 
troopers of the Ninth Cavalry and a part of 
the First lying down. I heard the conver- 
sation between you and one or two of the 
officers of the Ninth Cavalry. You ordered a 
charge, and the regular officers answered that 
they had no orders to move ahead ; where- 
upon you said : " Then let us through," and 
marched forward through the lines, our regi- 
ment followinej. The men of the Ninth and 



292 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



First Cavalry then jumped up and came for- 
ward with us. Then you waved your hat and 
gave the command to charge and we went up 
the hill. On the top of Kettle Hill my 
brother, Oliver B. Norton, was shot through 
the head and in the right wrist. It was just 
as you started to lead the charge on the San 
Juan hills ahead of us ; we saw that the regi- 
ment did not know you had gone and were 
not following, and my brother said, " For 
God's sake follow the Colonel," and as he 
rose the bullet went through his head. 

In reference to Mr. Bonsai's account of the 
Guasimas fight, Mr. Richard Harding Davis 
writes me as follows : 

We had already halted several times to give 
the men a chance to rest, and when we halted 
for the last time I thought it was for this same 
purpose, and began taking photographs of the 
men of L Troop, who were so near that they 
asked me to be sure and save them a photo- 
graph. Wood had twice disappeared down 
the trail beyond them and returned. As he 
came back for the second time I remember 
that you walked up to him (we were all dis- 
mounted then), and saluted and said: "Col- 
onel, Doctor La Motte reports that the pace 
is too fast for the men, and that over fifty 



APPENDIX C. 



293 



have fallen out from exhaustion." Wood re- 
plied sharply : " I have no time to bother with 
sick men now." You replied, more in answer, 
I suppose, to his tone than to his words : " I 
merely repeated what the Surgeon reported 
to me." Wood then turned and said in ex- 
planation : " I have no time for them now ; 
I mean that we are in sight of the enemy." 

This was the only information we received 
that the men of L Troop had been ambushed 
by the Spaniards, and, if they were, they were 
very calm about it, and I certainly was taking 
photographs of them at the time, and the rest 
of the regiment, instead of being half an 
hour's march away, was seated comfortably 
along the trail not twenty feet distant from 
the men of L Troop. You deployed G Troop 
under Captain Llewellen into the jungle at the 
right and sent K Troop after it, and Wood 
ordered Troops E and F into the field on our 
left. It must have been from ten to fifteen 
minutes after Capron and Wood had located 
the Spaniards before either side fired a shot. 
When the firing did come I went over to you 
and joined G Troop and a detachment of K 
Troop under Woodbury Kane, and we located 
more of the enemy on a ridge. 

If it is to be ambushed when you find the 
enemy exactly where you went to find him, 



294 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



and your scouts see him soon enough to give 
you sufficient time to spread five troops in 
skirmish order to attack him, and you then 
drive him back out of three positions for a 
mile and a half, then most certainly, as Bonsai 
says, " L Troop of the Rough Riders was 
ambushed by the Spaniards on the morning 
of June 24th." 

General Wood also writes me at length 
about Mr. Bonsai's book, stating that his ac- 
count of the Guasimas fight is without foun- 
dation in fact. He says : " We had five troops 
completely deployed before the first shot was 
fired. Captain Capron was not wounded until 
the fight had been going on fully thirty-five 
minutes. The statement that Captain Ca- 
pron 's troop was ambushed is absolutely 
untrue. We had been informed, as you know, 
by Castillo's people that we should find the 
dead guerilla a few hundred yards on the 
Siboney side of the Spanish lines." 

He then alludes to the waving of the guidon 
by K Troop as " the only means of com- 
munication with the regulars." He mentions 
that his orders did not come from General 
Wheeler, and that he had no instructions from 
General Wheeler directly or indirectly at any 
time previous to the fight. 



APPENDIX C, 295 

General Wood does not think that I give 
quite enough credit to the Rough Riders as 
compared to the regulars in this Guasimas 
fight, and believes that I greatly underesti- 
mate the Spanish force and loss, and that 
Lieutenant Tejeiro is not to be trusted at all 
on these points. He states that we began the 
fight ten minutes before the regulars, and that 
the main attack was made and decided by us. 
This was the view that I and all the rest of us 
in the regiment took at the time ; but as I 
had found since that the members of the First 
and Tenth Regular Regiments held with equal 
sincerity the view that the main part was taken 
by their own commands, I have come to the 
conclusion that the way I have described the 
action is substantially correct. Owing to the 
fact that the Tenth Cavalry, which was origi- 
nally in support, moved forward until it got 
mixed with the First, it is very difficult to get 
the exact relative position of the different 
troops of the First and Tenth in making the 
advance. Beck and Galbraith were on the 
left ; apparently Wainwright was farthest over 
on the right. General Wood states that Leon- 
ardo Ros, the Civil Governor of Santiago at 
the time of the surrender, told him that the 
Spanish force at Guasimas consisted of not 
less than 2,600 men, and that there were 



296 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

nearly 300 of them killed and wounded. I do 
not myself see how it was possible for us, as we 
were the attacking party and were advancing 
against superior numbers well sheltered, to 
inflict five times as much damage as we re- 
ceived ; but as we buried eleven dead Span- 
iards, and as they carried off some of their 
dead, I believe the loss to have been very much 
heavier than Lieutenant Tejeiro's reports. 

General Wood believes that in following 
Lieutenant Tejeiro I have greatly underesti- 
mated the number of Spanish troops who were 
defending Santiago on July ist, and here I 
think he completely makes out his case, he 
taking the view that Lieutenant Tejeiro's 
statements were made for the purpose of 
saving Spanish honor. On this point his let- 
ter runs as follows : 

A word in regard to the number of troops 
in Santiago. I have had, during my long 
association here, a good many opportunities 
to get information which you have not got and 
probably never will get ; that is, information 
from parties who were actually in the fight, 
who are now residents of the city ; also infor- 
mation which came to me as commanding 
officer of the city directly after the surrender. 

To sum up briefly as follows : The Spanish 



APPENDIX C, 297 

surrendered in Santiago 12,000 men. We 
shipped from Santiago something over 14,- 
000 men. The 2,000 additional were troops 
that came in from San Luis, Songo, and small 
up-country posts. The 12,000 in the city, 
minus the force of General Iscariq, 3,300 
infantry and 680 cavalry, or in round numbers 
4,000 men (who entered the city just after the 
battles of San Juan and El Caney), leaves 
8,000 regulars, plus the dead, plus Cervera's 
marines and blue-jackets, which he himself 
admits landing in the neighborhood of 1,200 
(and reports here are that he landed 1,380), 
and plus the Spanish Volunteer Battalion, 
which was between 800 and 900 men (this 
statement I have from the lieutenant-colonel 
of this very battalion), gives us in round 
numbers, present for duty on the morning of 
July I St, not less than 10,500 men. These 
men were distributed 890 at Caney, two com- 
panies of artillery at Morro, one at Socapa, 
and half a company at Puenta Gorda ; in all, 
not over 500 or 600 men, but for the sake of 
argument we can say a thousand. In round 
numbers, then, we had immediately about the 
city 8,500 troops. These were scattered from 
the cemetery around to Aguadores. In front 
of us, actually in the trenches, there could not 
by any possible method of figuring have been 



298 THE ROUGH RIDERS. 

less than 6,000 men. You can twist it in any- 
way you want to ; the figures I have given 
you are absolutely correct, at least they are 
absolutely on the side of safety. 

It is difficult for me to withstand the temp- 
tation to tell what has befallen some of my 
men since the regiment disbanded ; how Mc- 
Ginty, after spending some weeks in Roosevelt 
Hospital in New York with an attack of fever, 
determined to call upon his captain, Wood- 
bury Kane, when he got out, and procuring a 
horse rode until he found Kane's house, when 
he hitched the horse to a lamp-post and 
strolled in ; how Cherokee Bill married a wife 
in Hoboken, and as that pleasant city ulti- 
mately proved an uncongenial field for his 
activities, how I had to send both himself and 
his wife out to the Territory ; how Happy 
Jack, haunted by visions of the social methods 
obtaining in the best saloons of Arizona, 
applied for the position of " bouncer out " at 
the Executive Chamber when I was elected 
Governor, and how I got him a job at rail- 
roading instead, and finally had to ship him 
back to his own Territory also ; how a valued 
friend from a cow ranch in the remote West 
accepted a pressing invitation to spend a few 
days at the home of another ex-trooper, a New 



APPENDIX C. 



299 



Yorker of fastidious instincts, and arrived 
with an umbrella as his only baggage ; how 
poor Holderman and Pollock both died and 
were buried with military honors, all of Pol- 
lock's tribesmen coming to the burial; how 
Tom Isbell joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West 
Show, and how, on the other hand, George 
Rowland scornfully refused to remain in the 
East at all, writing to a gallant young New 
Yorker who had been his bunkie: " Well, old 
boy, I am glad I didnt go home with you for 
them people to look at, because I aint a Buf- 
falo or a rhinoceros or a giraffe, and I dont 
like to be Stared at, and you know we didnt 
do no hard fighting down there. I have been 
in closer places than that right here in Yunited 
States, that is Better men to fight than them 
dam Spaniards." In another letter Rowland 
tells of the fate of Tom Darnell, the rider, he 
who rode the sorrel horse of the Third Cavalry : 
*' There aint much news to write of except 
poor old Tom Darnell got killed about a 
month ago. Tom and another fellow had a 
fight and he shot Tom through the heart and 
Tom was dead when he hit the floor. Tom 
was sure a good old boy, and I sure hated to 
hear of him going, and he had plenty of grit 
too. No man ever called on him for a fight 
that he didn't get it." 



300 



THE ROUGH RIDERS. 



My men were children of the dragon's blood, 
and if they had no outland foe to fight and no 
outlet for their vigorous and daring energy, 
there was always the chance of their fighting 
one another : but the great majority, if given 
the chance to do hard or dangerous work, 
availed themselves of it with the utmost eager- 
ness, and though fever sickened and weakened 
them so that many died from it during the 
few months following their return, yet as a 
whole, they are now doing fairly well. A few 
have shot other men or been shot themselves ; 
a few ran for office and got elected, like 
Llewellen and Luna in New Mexico, or de- 
feated, like Brodie and Wilcox in Arizona ; 
some have been trying hard to get to the 
Philippines; some have returned to college, 
or to the law, or the factory, or the counting- 
room ; most of them have gone back to the 
mine, the ranch, and the hunting camp ; and 
the great majority have taken up the threads 
of their lives where they dropped them when 
the Maine was blown up and the country 
called to arms. 



THE END. 



3t^77-2 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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